Here in this sermon, Scott Brown warns Christians of the great danger of living in the ways of the gentiles. He challenges them to cast off the wicked ways of the world and cling to Christ alone. He says that the most fundamental aspect of Christianity is the sufficiency of Scripture and when we abandon it then we lose all foundation for the Christian life.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Scott Brown with the message, Do not learn the way of the Gentiles. The church set aside the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture in the 20th century. As a result, the church was corrupted. The gospel was was trampled. Families were destroyed.

And now we face a battle in the 21st century and that is this. Will we recover this doctrine? The battle in the 20th century was a battle for inerrancy. The battle for the 20th century is that will we believe that Scripture is sufficient for all of life. And the purpose of our conference really is to call a people to remember that God is sufficient.

Now as we begin, it's going to be a long journey of 36 messages, I just want to begin by talking about what pastoral care there is in all of these messages that will be given while we're together. And there's much pastoral care in the doctrine that we're considering because our sorrows, our troubles are related to a rejection of a sufficient God. And so here as we consider this, what we have for you at this conference is God and the word of His grace which is able to build you up, we give you the Good Shepherd. We give you God who sent His only begotten Son. My experience as a local church pastor is that every Sunday people walk in the church and their problems have become so enormous.

They have ballooned to such great proportions that God is very small and their problems are very big. Here in this conference, we want to sing a song of a God who is sufficient for all of the problems that we might face. And so here is the salve, the sufficiency of Christ. Also there's, I pray there's much pastoral care here in the whole area of worldliness because without understanding this doctrine, we would become children of the world. And we would become people who would live in such a way that it would appear that there was no God in heaven.

And there was no Bible given to his people. And so I pray that our time together would have a very pastoral effect on all of us, that as we reject the way of the Gentiles, that we find ourselves under the care of that great Shepherd of the sheep, who through the blood of the everlasting covenant can make you complete for every good work. And I pray that God would move in His Spirit in these ways that He would come to us in this way. I also want to say, by way of introduction, that ours is a message of urgency. What distinguishes us from many is that there are many who say the church needs to be tweaked, there needs to be some adjustments.

And that's not our message at all. Our message is a message of urgency and anguish. It's a message that says that the house of the Lord is in ruins. It's a message that says the gates of the city are torn off the hinges, and the walls of Jerusalem have been broken down. And the church is in the midst of a Babylonian captivity of worldliness.

And the people in the church have become a people of the world. And so our message is an urgent plea of anguish. And I pray that there would be anguish in all of our souls as we would recognize that the church has become a house of inventions, that it's become a mirror of the world, and that God would grip our hearts and turn all of us, for none of us are exempt from this problem. Mistrust in the Word of God is widespread. It is not being applied.

It's viewed as not adequate for church life, not adequate for family life, not adequate for politics or economics or counseling. People would rather go to Freud for their therapy. They would rather go to Keynes for their economics. They would rather go to Rousseau for education. They would they've been going to Marx for politics and the prosperity gospel for their counsel.

And what we want to raise is a banner of urgency in our times. Because what we believe that has happened in the church is that we would rather trust the professors than the prophets of God. Martin Luther said that timidity is no help in a time of emergency. And like A.W. Pink we would say drastic diseases call for drastic remedies.

And we believe the time is now. It's time for the sufficiency of Scripture. We believe it's time to say, and if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not thy whole body should be cast into hell." Now I would like to give you eight things that you must know about the sufficiency of Scripture in this speech. And here's the outline.

I'll give you the points before I bring them out one by one. But the first point is this. The sufficiency of Scripture is the sufficiency of God. Number two, the war against the sufficiency of Scripture is the consistent theme of Scripture. And then, number three, the sufficiency of scripture must be defined and we'll spend time defining what we mean.

And number four, that scripture is a whole and you cannot detach a single section or a genre of Scripture from your thinking. And then number five, it is complete and you cannot add to it or subtract a single word from it. And then Number six, you can cast yourself on a single word of scripture. And then number seven, the sufficiency of scripture forces a battle. And if you fight it, You'll bleed and you'll have scars.

And then number eight. The sufficiency of scripture brings a vision of hope and happiness for the people of God. So that's where we're going. Let's take the first point. The sufficiency of Scripture is the sufficiency of God.

Now at the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, our fundamental principle For all that we hope to build everything from is this doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. And the National Center for Family Integrated Churches' confession, Article 1, reads like this, we affirm that our all wise God has revealed Himself and His will in a completed revelation, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, which is fully adequate in both content and clarity for everything pertaining to life, salvation, and godliness, sanctification, including the ordering of the church and the family. We deny that God's people should treat His Word as inadequate for church and family life by supplementing His completed revelation with humanistic psychology, corporate business models, and modern marketing techniques. And so you notice in this confession there's both a positive and a negative. And that is what we want to present to you during this conference, That there is the positive and the negative side.

And we have them actually displayed on this very platform. On the side of the judgment of God, on the side of your house being blown away by the raging winds, there is this, woe to the rebellious children that take counsel but not of me. Isaiah chapter 30 verse 1. And then the antithesis, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. And so what we have here is this principle that takes us to two problems.

One that Scripture is sufficient and the other, that the ways of the world and living them will cause destruction in your life. And so, we're bringing on the one hand a message of woe. The woe of the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah there are six woes being communicated. And this one here is the fifth woe.

And it's the woe that is really communicated in the title of this speech, Do Not Learn the Way of the Gentiles. And it's a call to God's people to say, if you follow the way of the Gentiles, Look out! Something is going to happen. Save our ship! And that's exactly what we're saying here at this conference.

And we're saying that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And at the same time we have this marvelous vision of hope that's communicated by the Apostle Paul to Timothy where he says all scripture is inspired by God and is profitable. And so these two passages of Scripture, they form the battle lines of this conference. Now I would like to speak for a moment about the seriousness of the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. Why would we make such a big deal out of one doctrine?

And the answer is this. The answer is this. The supremacy of Scripture is nothing less than the supremacy of Christ. And so when you say Scripture is sufficient, the Bible says that you're also saying that Christ is sufficient, that God is sufficient. We know in John chapter 1, 1, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Christ is the Word made flesh. So you can't talk about the Son of God without simultaneously talking about the Word of God. The Bible says that Scripture itself is God-breathed. That it has, that it literally came from God. It's the breath of God.

God didn't breathe into the Scripture. He breathed the Scripture. And that's what it means when we read that the word is God breathed. So you cannot talk about God the Father without simultaneously talking about the Word of God. And that means that every word of Christ is a word of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

And so the authority of Scripture cannot be separated from the authority of God. And I want us to understand how grave and important this subject is to us. And so we are so grateful that God and His Word would be His voice in the church. And that the shepherding of Christ to His people and the leadership of the Holy Spirit to the individual would all be accomplished by a sufficient word. Now those of you who will stay with us and worship with us on Sunday morning, a church service that's being sponsored by my home church, Hope Baptist Church in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

We're going to sing a song, and it's a song that's become very popular. But in that service, we're going to sing the song, In Christ alone and it's a beautiful song and it makes it makes you weep and it's such a wonderful song but when we gather to sing that song I pray that we'll sing it like we've never sung it before. Because it's possible that we've sung that song and thought that the song was about some feeling about Jesus. Or about some good thing or help that he has done, which he does all the time for us. But I pray that we would know more than we've ever known before, that when we sing the song in Christ alone, we are saying that Scripture alone is sufficient and that God intends to lead my life through it.

The war against the sufficiency of Scripture is a consistent theme of Scripture. Not only is this an enormously serious subject, But we have to also understand that the war against God in the world has always been a war against a sufficient word of God. And so I'd like to illustrate a 4, 000 year battle from Genesis 1-1 to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. Because the war against the sufficiency of Scripture is nothing more than a war against the holiness of God communicated in His Word. And every skirmish involves either adding or subtracting from the Word of God.

And of course, the war against a sufficient God begins with Lucifer, who rejected the sufficiency of Christ, and he valued his own will over God. And he wasted no time to appeal to our first parents, Adam and Eve, as they struggled with the sufficiency of God and of His Word. And the serpent said to him, Hath God said? This was a direct attack against a sufficient Christ, a sufficient Word. And then Noah, Noah trusted in the sufficiency of God's word.

That humble preacher of righteousness did trust, and he believed God, and he built the ark for a hundred years while he sat under the condemnation of his countrymen. And then Noah's great-grandson Nimrod despised the sufficiency of Scripture and loved the sufficiency of man. And he threw off God's authority to become his own man and millions followed him. And the expression of this rebellion was the Tower of Babel and they said, let us make a name for ourselves. And that is the heart of the battle for the sufficiency of Scripture.

In 2000 B.C., ten generations after Nimrod, Abraham, and Sarah struggled with the sufficiency of the promises of God. And sometimes they honored and sometimes they despised the promises of God. And yet God reckoned it to them as righteousness because of their faith in Christ. Lot preferred the culture of Sodom and defiled his whole family and future generations. And in Genesis 18 we read the story of how an entire culture threw off God's laws for their own.

And even Lot's wife reflected the vision of the hatred of the sufficiency of God. And she looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, and the Lord Jesus Christ said, remember Lot's wife. Moses esteemed Christ and His word, yet sometimes he faltered. Yet he said, like good men must do in the midst of their frailties, Do not add or subtract from the Word. Oh, that they had such a heart in 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 David declared some of the sweetest words that ears can ever hear.

The law of The Lord is perfect, converting the soul. Hear this? This imperfect man stood before God struggling just like you and I do with the sufficiency of Scripture. Struggling, laboring, wondering if we can ever shake the jaws of the devil upon us, whether we can ever get rid of them, and finally, finally be at that place of complete peace with God, knowing that only Christ can accomplish that peace. David was a brother for us.

To help us see that we must say, oh how I love thy law and at the same time recognize how far we have to go. We could speak of the kings of Israel and Judah and how they threw off the commands of God and started the prophets wailing and calling a people back to a sufficient God. The last prophet in the Old Testament, Malachi, ends like this, You have not kept my ways. You cover the altar with tears, but you don't love your wife, and you're not giving me godly offspring. But I will send, I will send a prophet.

And then that prophet appears, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who obeyed all of the Commandments for all repentant sinners who could not keep them. And Jesus said, it is written. And he attacked the Pharisees who had rejected the sufficiency of Scripture. And then there was the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man's family had rejected the sufficiency of God and His Word.

And they went and they pleaded that Lazarus would go and tell them about the torments of hell and Lazarus says to them They have Moses and the prophets. That's all they need And Then in the early church the churches in the Galatian region were threatened with abandoning the sufficiency of scripture regarding the gospel. And the Apostle Paul comes with some of the strongest language in Scripture. And he says, oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect in the flesh?

You've become estranged, you've fallen from grace, you ran well, but who hindered you? And we find the attack is often on the gospel of Jesus Christ as it was in the Galatian region. And then finally, in the book of Revelation, we read a warning against adding and subtracting again from Holy Scripture. And it is as if to say again as it was said so many times, do not learn the way of the Gentiles. Woe to those who seek counsel but not of me.

Woe to those who go down to Egypt for advice. But man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." And the departures in Israel at the time of Christ were so severe that the prophecies of the prophets would come true. And the Lord Jesus Christ would cry out saying, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets and stonest those which are sent thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not. And then one day Jesus was walking beside the temple and his disciples came up to him and he said to them, do you see all these stones? And he asked, I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another.

Everyone will be thrown down. And forty years exactly from the crucifixion of Christ, That happened. And Jerusalem was destroyed. There's four thousand years of the battle against a sufficient scripture. Doug Phillips in the next session is going to pick up the battle lines again at 70 AD and work himself forward because there is a direct line of reasoning that you can trace from the fall of Jerusalem to the emergent church today.

So there's been a long war against the sufficiency of Scripture. The third point I'd like to make is that the sufficiency of Scripture must be defined. And so we're going to bring some definitions that we hope will help calibrate you so that you're not confused about terms that we might use from now on in all of these messages. First of all, let's take the doctrine of inerrancy. Psalm 19 1 gives us this doctrine in such, Psalm 19 verses 7 through 11 gives us this beautiful doctrine.

But the doctrine of inerrancy affirms that the Word of God was written without error or contradiction under the full inspiration of God. God being Truth Himself can speak only truth in being holy and verbally God-given. Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching. No less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God than in its witness to God's saving grace and individual lives. I love the way that Lewis Gausen expresses this doctrine.

He says that it is God speaking in man, God speaking by man, God speaking for man. And that is the doctrine of inerrancy. But it's possible that Scripture could be inerrant but not sufficient, and we believe that is one of the great problems that is upon us in the church today and so we speak now of the sufficiency of Scripture and the the memory verse of this conference second Timothy 3 16 and 17 explicitly says that it is complete and it thoroughly furnishes for every good work. And it's all the spiritual food that you will ever need because man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." It is so sufficient that we are commanded not to add or subtract to it. It's so sufficient that every word of God is pure.

And of course, this doctrine is the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura. Let me give you a definition of this doctrine. The inerrant Scriptures and the Scriptures alone are wholly sufficient and authoritative to govern all areas of life, of faith and practice. It supplies the only guide from God for the governing of our lives. It may not be superintended by any other source of instruction, knowledge, or circumstance.

You might add the Westminster Confession and the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 both state, There are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and the government of the church common to human actions and societies which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed. And then there is the Regulative Principle of worship. This is narrower in its scope in many ways because it focuses on worship and church life. And the Regulative Principle states this, that God has instituted in the Scriptures everything he requires for worship in the church and everything else is prohibited. Therefore, the only permissible elements of worship are those that are instituted by command, precept, or example, or by good and necessary consequence.

Now this principle was central to the Reformation, but it's almost unknown today. Though most people have heard of inerrancy, they're actually fuzzy about sufficiency and foggy or maybe even lobotomized on the whole matter of the Regulative Principle. And this idea is contained in this statement by John Knox. Whatever is not warranted by Scripture is forbidden. And so there must be a clear command or a precept or a principle or a pattern in order to go forward with it in the church.

Why is it that the church has become a house of inventions? Because it's opened itself up to the creativity of man. And man has done quite an amazing job at being creative. I believe we've just come off of 50 years of what I'm going to call creative Christianity, where we have invented the church in our own generation, for our own generation. And this was a terrible mistake.

We might debate and disagree on what is a good and necessary implication. But unless there are some guiding principles in a sufficient word, then the church is always subject to the next hot leader. It's always subject to the next cool movement that sweeps the church. If scripture is not sufficient for worship, then worship can become anything anyone wants it to be at any time. And all you need to get that is a creative and attractive leader and you will have any kind of church imaginable as we do today.

And so one of our appeals here at this conference is really a desire for a prayer in all of our hearts that we that would say, oh Lord, we desire to be governed by Scripture alone. We desire to restrict our passions according to what we know is pure. And that's the spirit of the Regulative Principle of worship. And we so highly promote it at the National Center for Family Integrated Churches. And then there is the normative principle, which is the opposite of the regulative principle.

And The normative principle states that the church is free to do anything that is not specifically prohibited. Whatever is not specifically prohibited is permitted. And this doctrine denies that God has fully instituted how the church should worship and that Scripture is not sufficient to inform us in Christian worship. We would just like to submit because Scripture is sufficient the Church is not man's playground. I would like to give you five assumptions that contradict the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.

These assumptions, these propositions if you want to call them that, are widely held in the modern church. And I'm going to run through them quickly, but my brother Doug Phillips will pick them up in the next message so that we can labor on them for a while. And the first assumption that contradicts the sufficiency of Scripture is this. The red letters are the most important part of the Bible. And this philosophy did not come from the Bible.

It was perhaps popularized by C.I. Scofield and the Bible that he put together, and many good men after him who embraced it. Scofield had a great influence in the church in the 20th century. We need to understand, though, that Schofield was one who was convicted of taking bribes, that he divorced his wife, that he was convicted of fraud and forgery, and he abandoned his family. He went on to become an ordained minister and was secretly divorcing his first wife while courting his second.

And it's not surprising that in his commentary there's Nothing at all in it about the moral law in the Old or the New Testament, and nothing related to divorce or bribery. We have to understand that the way we think often ends up being formed by men who weren't even believers. But it was an unbeliever who promoted the idea that the red letters are the most important part. The second assumption is this. If it is not mentioned in the Bible, it is automatically lawful.

We deny the proposition that says that unless it is specifically mentioned, It's authorized. There are many things not mentioned in the Bible that have many principles Gambling is not mentioned in the Bible, but we know it's wrong because of what God says about covetousness we don't need the term gambling in the Bible and Then number three if there is no command in scripture, it is not required. And then fourthly, if it is not condemned in scripture, it is authorized. And then fifth, any Old Testament statement is void unless it is specifically mentioned again in the New Testament. This principle, Peter Masters, who's the pastor of the church in London where Spurgeon used to preach, said this about this idea, this is a wayward test and it takes away at a stroke most of the Bible.

Now the bad news is that these assumptions have led to the seeker-sensitive, neo-Roman Catholic, emergent, culturally palatable, pragmatic, prosperity gospel Christianity, and it made it alive and well among us. It's interesting that the Bible continues to be the best-selling book worldwide, but Christians remain largely biblically illiterate. And the Church resorts to unbiblical thinking and methods that are reflected by these propositions. We like to believe that the Bible is inspired, but we don't want it to change us. We like the spirituality, but we don't like the conformity.

And so there are many movements in the church today which would put Scripture on the shelf, but still maintain inerrant statements about salvation and even God Himself. We live in an environment today where men are comfortable with taking out a blank sheet of paper and figuring out how they're going to go do church in the next 20 years. Who make it a conversation rather than a prophecy. Who go back to Rome and make it an entertainment center, and who want to make it socially acceptable. And so with this, with we say That the sufficiency of Scripture needs to be defined.

So that we understand what it really means. The fourth thing that you must know about the sufficiency of Scripture is that Scripture is a whole. And you cannot detach a single genre. There are millions of people in our churches today who actually have a dark view of the Old Testament and Some people actually dislike parts of it and they're afraid to tell you that the inspired word is offensive to them. If you find a statement in Scripture in a didactic section or a narrative And the principle coming from it makes you uncomfortable.

You need to realize that you are the problem, not God. Are we smarter than God? If everything in Scripture was palatable, that would make us God. But God comes to sinful man. We should expect that the Scriptures should offend us.

We should expect that we wouldn't understand it all. And we should expect that it would It would make us worse than we think we are. Some people think that the Old Testament God is mean and the New Testament Jesus is sweet And that the Old Testament is about rules and the New Testament is about relationship And many people look at the Old Testament like like my friend Andy Davis says like an old garrulous woman She just babbles on and on and on and then every once in a while a stroke of brilliance a light shines and she says absolutely something absolutely wonderful and many people believe the Old Testament is like that. That most of it's gobbledygook and then there are a few great verses and they happen to be your favorites. We believe that the law of God is understood in the same way that the Westminster Confession and the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 explain it.

If you want to know at least how I believe about the Law, those are the confessions that explain with clarity and distinctiveness what we mean by believing in the law of God. The fifth thing we need to know about Scripture is that it is complete and you cannot add to it or subtract a single word from it. In Deuteronomy chapter 4 we read, you shall not add or subtract. And that's why In Proverbs 30 we read, Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you, and you be found a liar. And then the Apostle John escalates the consequences And he says in Revelation chapter 22 verse 18 that everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book and if anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the book of life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. These two actions are always what tempt us. On the one hand, we're tempted to take away from the Word of God. On the other hand, we're tempted to add to it. Antinomianism takes away from the Word of God.

It says it doesn't apply to me. All I need is my heart. I'm free from the Law. I'm not under the Law. I'm under grace.

I don't need the Law of God. That is taking away from the law of God. And the curses will be upon a church who does that. We live in the age of an antinomian church. But then there's the other problem.

You can turn to the right or the left in your ways. You can turn to Phariseeism which adds to the Word of God. Jesus said in Mark chapter 7, you nicely set aside the command of God for the sake of your tradition. And so the Pharisees did what we like to do. They heaped up loads of requirements that God never spoke of.

And we find the Pharisees rebuking the disciples and Jesus because of it. In Deuteronomy we read, in Deuteronomy 8.1, every commandment which I command you today, You must be careful to observe that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers. Here, Here the prophet of God says that every commandment, every single commandment, is meant to be obeyed. And here Moses, he's begging us to know the commandments. He's begging us to labor, to understand what the commands are, that we would labor in them so that we could live them out.

The beauty of knowing the commandments is that it does so much good to us. Because the more commandments we know, the more we know what sinners we are. The more statutes and judgments of God that are in our hearts. The more repentance there is for us, and the more repentance there is for us, there's more refreshment. Every command that is known and broken casts a sinner on the cross of Christ.

The commandments are beautiful. That's why David could say, oh, how I love thy law. I believe partly he said that because he knew that it cast him on the mercies of God. And the more commandments He knew, the greater sinner He became, and the greater Savior He had, and the greater mercy He knew in His heart. And He would be there, so comforted by the Lord Jesus Christ, who kept all of the commandments for him.

Knowing the commandments is a must for those who would embrace this doctrine. Because it is complete and you cannot add to it or subtract a single word from it. Charles Spurgeon was preaching on Hebrews chapter 4 verses 12 and 13. And he says what I pray fills all of our hearts as we're together in this place. He says, why the book has wrestled with me, the book has smitten me, the book has comforted me, the book has smiled on me, the book has frowned on me, the book has clasped my hand, the book has warmed my heart, The book weeps with me and sings with me.

It whispers to me and it preaches to me. It maps my way and holds up my goings. It was to me the young man's best companion, and it is still my morning and evening chaplain. We cannot add or subtract a single word from it. Let me close this point with this quote from Thomas Watson who said, listen to this very carefully, I pray you get this and write this down, ignorance of scripture is the mother of error, not of devotion.

Ignorance of Scripture is the mother of error and not devotion. So not only is it complete and you cannot add or subtract a single word, You can cast yourself on every word of Scripture. Jesus spoke of the importance, the eternal importance of the jot and the tittle. And even the smallest particles of scripture are inspired. And that's why he said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word, every word, every single word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

From a single word, the apostles would often insist and deduce from it the most serious consequences and the most fundamental doctrines. The Lord Jesus repelled the devil by saying, it is written, you shall not tempt the Lord thy God. God has said. And so you can take assurance from one single word of Scripture. You can cast the destiny of your whole soul on a word of Scripture.

You can do that because Christ did, especially as He quoted the Old Testament prophets. And because Christ did, wouldn't you think that so could you and so could I? And not only can you cast yourself on every word, but it forces a battle and you will have scars if you fight it. When the Apostle John opened the sixth seal in the book of Revelation, he saw an astonishing scene because under the throne of God were the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and the testimony which they held. And they cried out with a loud voice and they said, how long, O Lord, holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth." And then a white robe was given to them.

And it was said to them that they should rest a while. And a while longer until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who would be killed as they were completed. And what was happening under the throne of God was an example of those who had truly embraced the Word of God. Some will be killed for the Word of God. If we would be killed for anything in this world, I pray that we would be killed for the law and the testimony.

That we would go down in flames with our spiritual forefathers and hang on the gibbets and sing the praises of Jesus Christ and bless our enemies. But this is the lot of those who would do this battle. Our culture hates the gospel. It hates its exclusiveness. It hates divine judgment.

And if you genuinely believe in the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture and seek to live by it, you will be in a battle and you will bleed. And you'll have scars to show for it. It's amazing to me to think about how controversial the Word of God is. The other night I woke up early in the morning, I bolted up in the night and it came to me, what are the top 10 things that cultures hate that the Bible tells women? And I wrote them down.

Women should be keepers at home, The world hates that. Women should submit and obey, submit to and obey their husbands and follow the example of Sarah calling her husband Lord. Women should dress modestly. Women don't own their own bodies, their husbands do. Women should be fruitful and multiply.

Younger women should be taught by older women. Women should not kill their babies made in the image of God. Wives should love their husbands. Women should not be busybodies. Women should not exercise authority over men.

These are fighting words in this culture I made a list for men as well and a list for children We need there's a list for churches and nations and businesses, but we need to be stopped being afraid of battle We need to prepare a generation that's ready for battle. I want my son to be ready for battle in this generation that he would take out the sword of the Spirit. It's a sharp blade. And if he wields it, there will be blood. One of the great joys of our lives, my son and I together, is that we've spent the last several years considering how we might battle.

And we've just written a book together called Preparing boys for battle. And this book is actually a very playful and fun book for us, but it takes imagery from the battle of Iwo Jima and the lessons learned there. And the proposition of the book is every son needs to hear his father say, don't waste your youth, take on mighty challenges and things like that. But we need to prepare our children for battle because if they embrace, if they are true believers, They will bleed and they'll have scars and they'll have broken relationships and they'll be slandered and gossiped about as they desire to find favor with God alone. You need to know that those who have embraced the sufficiency of scripture have shed blood in some form or another.

Another. And then finally, number eight. I'm sorry, number seven. The sufficiency of Scripture brings a vision of hope and happiness. What we know from Scripture is that when the Word of God is mixed with faith in the soul of a human being, then a divine power is unleashed.

It works like a catalyst. And it's like light and heat and thunder and water and like the hammer of the Word. And it soothes and it comforts and it confronts. But the Word of God requires faith. And when the Word of God is mixed with faith, it brings about a vision of happiness and hope in the world.

Paul said that the Word spoken did not profit because it was not mixed with faith in them who heard it. And so the Word of God, when it falls into a heart without faith, it has no profit. But when it is received not as the word of man, but as the word of God, then it transforms. But it requires faith to understand that the natural man cannot receive. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2.14, but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

That means that the Bible is not a code book. It's not first in operations manual, but it requires meditation and a regenerate mind. And so the question is, do you have faith? Do you have faith mingled with the Word of God and it rises up to bless you, to help you in the night, to help you as you sit in your house, as you walk by the way, as you lie down, and when you rise up. Do you have faith?

If you're sitting here today and you know you have faith but you've never declared it, declare it, declare it. Know that if God, if God is warming your heart and you've repented of your sins, you've seen your decrepit nature, and you have faith in Christ alone, who kept all of the commandments for you and you've been realizing that you can't keep them and you need a sufficient Savior. Let this be the night of your salvation that you would say, yes Lord, oh how I love thy law, It is my meditation all the day. That's the cry of a repentant sinner. And I pray that God would redeem many who have just had the Word of God to read, but not to thrill them and not to guide them.

So we set before you life and death and good and evil. Your memory verse for the weekend is on page 25. I'd like to look at it with you. It begins, And that from a child Thou hast known the Holy Scriptures. And I realized that my wife, sitting next to me, had known the Holy Scriptures from a child.

And I was so blessed to sit next to her. Because all her life long she has loved the Law of God. And she has used it to counsel me in the day and in the night. And I pray that there would be many little girls who would follow in her footsteps, and they would, from a child, know the holy scriptures which are able to make the wise unto salvation. Oh Lord help us, that scripture would fill our hearts when we would obey Him.