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Why Does Evil Dominate the World? (Selected Scriptures) - Duration: 1:03:43.
I told you that I was going to speak on the problem of evil.
Why did God allow evil in the world?
You could frame the question a number of ways.
If the Creator God is so good, why is there so much evil in the world?
In fact, the reality of evil in the world is one of the favorite justifications of those
who reject the God of the Bible.
They're eager to ask those questions in a myriad of different ways...how can God be
holy and allow His creation to be dominated by unholiness?
How can God be perfectly righteous and ordain the presence of unrighteousness?
There are a number of ways that this particular idea is effectively communicated.
One is a syllogism, a series of logical steps such as the biblical God is loving...the biblical
God is all-knowing, the biblical God is all powerful, yet massive evil exists in the world
therefore the biblical God does not exist.
That is to say that whoever allows this evil cannot be loving, or cannot be holy, or cannot
be all powerful or all knowing and still allow evil.
In the minds of many, this backs Christians up into an impossible corner.
There are many who see this as putting us, I guess you could say, at fourth and forty
on our own ten-yard line.
And our only option is to punt.
And there are many Christians who would agree with that and they would grab Deuteronomy
29:29, "The secret things belong to the Lord," and punt that into the opposition's territory
as far as they can.
Is that the best we can do when pressed against our own theological end zone, is to punt Deuteronomy
29:29?
Isn't there anything better than that in the divine play book?
Isn't there some kind of long pass we can complete, something that will not only allow
us to escape from defeat, but guarantee victory?
I believe there is.
I believe that Scripture gives us an answer and without hesitation we can know that answer,
we can understand that answer, and we can find eminent satisfaction in that answer.
It is not enough to simply say the secret things belong to the Lord, which is to say
we don't know, God doesn't tell us.
God did not tell Adam and Eve why He let that snake in the Garden.
And He didn't tell them why He gave that snake the ability to talk.
Nor did God tell Job why He unleashed calamity, disease, disaster and death and Satan into
his life.
And when Job tried to get an answer out of God, He never did tell him why.
So isn't that the best approach, to just say we really don't know, Scripture doesn't tell
us?
That would be the best answer if Scripture didn't tell us.
If that was honestly the case and we said that we have no scriptural answer, that's
fine.
But we do have a scriptural answer, that's fine.
But we do have a scriptural answer.
And this opens up to our thinking a whole category of theological truth that goes under
the name of theodicy...theodicy...t-h-e-o-d-i-c-y, theodicy.
It comes from two Greek words, theos meaning God, and dik ē which is the root of the words
that mean righteousness or righteous, or just, or justice.
A theodicy is an explanation of how God can be just, or how God can be righteous.
It is a defense of God's righteousness in the face of the presence of pervasive sin.
And so I want to give you what I believe is a biblical theodicy, a biblical defense of
why God who is holy, who is loving, who is all-knowing, who is all-powerful has allowed
evil to dominate His creation?
So I'm going to put together my own little series of logical points.
Number one, evil exists...evil exists.
This is without serious argument.
It is incontrovertible unless you are a Christian science advocate.
It was Mary Baker Eddy Patterson Glover Frye...she had a problem with men...who basically developed
what is called Christian Science.
The teaching of Christian Science is this, "All evil is an illusion.
All sickness is an illusion.
And even death is an illusion."
Christian Science is actually like Grape Nuts.
If you've ever had Grape Nuts, I don't know why they named them that, they're not grapes
and they're not nuts.
And Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific.
But it sounds impressive.
The answer is not to play some ridiculous metaphysical game to say something doesn't
exist that clearly does exist.
Evil exists.
It exists apparently, manifestly, massively, dominantly in our world.
And there are a number of categories in which evil exists.
Let me give you a few.
There is natural evil.
That is impersonal, external, physical, temporal evil in the form of diseases, disasters, catastrophes,
the kinds of things that come from the physical world, the cursed creation from tiny bacteria
to tidal waves, from viruses to volcanoes.
The whole natural world is blighted by bad things, things that make you sick, things
that injure you, things that kill you.
And humans since the Fall have lived at the mercy of the physical corruption.
All you have to do is go back to the book of Genesis and not long after the Fall comes
the Flood which basically is a massive natural disaster ordained and authored and executed
by God Himself which drowns the entire human race with the exception of eight people.
There is natural evil beyond the Flood even to this very day, rarely does a day go by
when we don't hear of someone somewhere or some group somewhere or some massive amount
of people somewhere dying in some kind of natural disaster, or some plague, or some
illness sweeping through the lives of people.
Natural evil.
Secondly, there's moral evil.
Moral evil is personal as opposed to natural evil which is impersonal.
It is internal, it is spiritual.
It is wickedness, sin, transgression, iniquity, whatever term you want to use for it.
It is a bent, it is a disposition.
It is an attitude, it is a course of thinking, speaking and conduct which dominates the human
race so that Scripture says, "No one is good, not even one."
Scripture says, "All the thoughts of the human heart are only evil continually."
Scripture says that it is out of the heart that lust conceives and produces sin and from
that sin comes death.
The Bible tells us that society is dominated by corruption.
And it is not a disaster that kills us.
A disaster may kill us, but if we miss all the disasters and all the diseases, we will
still die because the waves of sin is death.
The corruption comes to every human being.
It impacts every life, every relationship.
All of humanity is made up of sinners, no one is exempt.
And all the immoral sinners collide with each other in malfunctioning families and friendships
and rivalries and associations and nations.
The collision of wicked, selfish, immoral hearts fills the world with one disaster after
another.
Then thirdly there is supernatural evil...supernatural evil.
This is the evil that is basically perpetrated by demons, fallen angels, the associates of
Satan, the number of the angels that fell from heaven with Satan as indicated in Revelation
12 to be a third of the angels, leaving two thirds remaining as holy angels, one third
are fallen.
Satan is one of those and the whole world, 1 John 5:20 says, lies in the lap of the evil
one.
These vile beings are as old as creation.
They are unmitigatedly wicked.
There is nothing in them that is good at all.
There are ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands of them.
They ply their wickedness on an angelic level and also on a human level.
It will get worse in the future when God casts them all into the earth in the future time
of Tribulation.
Satan who leads them is for this time given temporary authority over the world system.
He has a temporary and delegated sovereignty in this world so that even as believers we
are not wrestling against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and
the rulers of the darkness and authorities in high places that are wicked.
There is a massive, spiritual struggle going on in this world system effected by demons.
They have the power to seduce and deceive humanity against God and against the gospel
and against Scripture and to draw them deeper and deeper and deeper into immorality and
iniquity.
And then there is another category of evil, eternal evil....eternal evil.
In a word, hell...hell.
People who go to hell, the majority of the human race, will be forever evil...forever
evil.
The worm will not die.
The fire will not be quenched.
The remorse will not end.
The judgment will not cease.
The punishment will not be mitigated.
Recently one of the popular pastors in America who has led a great church growth movement
said, "Hell, as far as he's concerned, is like missing the last three pointer at the
buzzer to lose the game.
And so you spend forever feeling bad about missing that shot."
That is not a biblical view of hell.
It is punishment.
It is unrestrained and unmitigated evil and a fully informed accusing conscience.
Yes there is evil.
And there is not marginal evil and there is not minimal evil, there is pervasive, dominant
evil.
And I guess you could say that evil has a kind of secondary dominance in the whole of
creation.
It effects everything.
It effects the natural creation, the supernatural creation and the human and personal creation.
So we start with the obvious.
We admit it.
We don't deny it.
Anybody who denies it is an absolute fool.
Evil is massive, evil is out of control, evil is ingrained, it is systemic, it is everywhere
all the time manifest in every one.
Now let's move to the next factor in our reasoning.
First, evil exists.
Second, God exists.
God exists.
And only one God exists and He is the God revealed in Scripture, the one, true and only
living God, the God of the Bible.
And He is exactly the God that Scripture says He is, since the Bible is His self revelation.
He is as the Revelation of Scripture describes Him.
He is all-powerful, He is all-knowing, He is loving, and He is absolutely holy.
Yes He is holy.
Yes He is loving.
Yes He is omnipotent, that is all-powerful and omniscient, all-knowing.
He controls absolutely everything.
The Bible tells us that God exists and that nothing exists that He does not ordain.
Nothing occurs that He does not ordain.
Everything is designed by, ordained by, and controlled by God.
That is the biblical testimony.
Let me remind you of it.
First Chronicles 29:11 and 12.
"Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty.
For all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine.
Thine is the Kingdom, O Lord.
Thou art exalted as head above all.
Thou reignest over all and in Thine hand is power and might and in Thine hand is to make
great to give strength unto all."
Psalm 115:3, "Our God is in the heavens, He has done whatever He pleased."
Daniel 4:35, "He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants
of the earth and none can stay His hand or say unto Him, 'What are you doing?'"
Scripture repeatedly affirms the sovereignly affirms the sovereignty of God over everything.
God's sovereignty is absolute, irresistible and infinite.
When we say that God is sovereign, we simply mean He has a right to be in charge of absolutely
everything because He, in fact, is in charge of absolutely everything.
That is why 1 Timothy 6:15 says, "He is the only potentate, or ruler.
He is the only sovereign, the only monarch."
In Revelation 4:11 we read, "You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power,
for You have created all things and for Your pleasure they are and were created."
"All things" is the operative phrase.
Everything fits into God's pleasure.
Everything is to please God.
Proverbs 16:4, "The Lord has made all things for Himself, even the wicked for the day of
evil."
Even the wicked for the day of evil.
Listen to Deuteronomy 32:39.
"See now that I, I am He...says God...and there is no God beside Me, it is I who put
to death and give life.
I have wounded.
It is I who heal and there is no one who can deliver from My hand."
Or Exodus 4:11, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Who has made man's mouth?
Or who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind?
Is it not I the Lord?'"
Or Psalm 105:16, "He called for a famine upon the land."
Or 2 Kings 17:25, "They did not fear the Lord, therefore the Lord sent lions which killed
some of them."
Scripture is very clear that God is behind what we would classify as good things and
what we would classify as evil things, or bad things.
God created out of His own free choice, uninfluenced, God created everything that is, ordained everything
that is.
And in 2 Samuel 10:12 it says, "The Lord does what seems to Him good."
The Lord does what seems to Him good.
Listen to Psalm 33:9 to 11.
"He spoke and it was done.
He commanded and it stood fast.
The Lord brings the counsel of the heathen to naught, He makes the devices of the people
of no effect.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations."
Or Psalm 103:19, "The Lord has prepared His throne in the heavens.
His Kingdom rules over all."
Or Isaiah 14:27, "The Lord of host has purposed and who shall disannul it?
His hand is stretched out, who shall turn it back?"
Or Isaiah 46:9 and 10, "Remember the former things of old, for I am God, there is none
else, I am God.
There is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times to things
that are not yet done, saying My counsel shall stand, I will do all My pleasure."
First Samuel 2:6 to 8, "The Lord kills and makes alive.
He brings down to the grave, and brings up.
He makes poor and makes rich.
He brings low and lifts up."
Or Amos 3:6, "If there is a calamity in the city, will not the Lord have done it?"
God controls absolutely everything.
There is no evil outside His plan.
There is no evil outside His purpose.
He knows everything that can be known, that is knowable.
He has comprehensive power to do everything that can be done that is possible.
That is what the Bible says about God.
And in that perfect knowledge, and in that perfect power, and with perfect holiness,
and expressing His perfect love, God ordains everything.
That leads us to a third conclusion.
Evil exists, God exists, and this is the only God who exists, thirdly, God wills evil to
exist.
God wills evil to exist.
It is inescapable.
Turn in your Bible for a moment to Isaiah 45, and we're going to have to move rapidly
tonight to work our way through this.
But in Isaiah 45 it is important to draw your attention to...well let's start in verse 5,
Isaiah 45:5.
"I am the Lord, there is no other.
Besides Me there is no God.
I will gird you though you have not known Me that men may know from the rising to the
setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me.
I am the Lord, there is no other."
That's fairly well established in those two verses.
"I am the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity.
I am the Lord who does all these."
Go down to verse 9.
"Woe to the one who quarrels with His maker.
An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth?
Will the clay say to the potter, 'What are you doing?'
Or the things you are making say, 'He has no hands.'
Woe to him who says to a father, 'What are you begetting?'
Or to a woman, 'To what are you giving birth?'
No pot can tell the potter what to do.
No born child can tell his parents to give birth or not give birth.
Nor can you question what God does."
And God clearly has ordained evil.
Now at this point panic strikes the heart of Arminians...not Armenians, but Arminians.
Big difference.
Panic strikes the heart of Arminians.
They become short of breath here.
They start to have heart palpitations, sweaty palms, their eyes roll back, they launch into
rapid heart rate.
What?
God has ordained evil?
They don't deny God's power, they would affirm it.
They don't deny His knowledge, they would affirm it.
They don't even deny that God should be glorified in saving sinners.
But the panic attack hits them because they cannot let God be held responsible for evil.
If you want to drive Arminian theology, or the opposite of Reformed theology, or the
opposite of Calvinism, that kind of theology that denies that God is sovereign and that
regeneration is fully a work of God, that kind of theology that says man is sovereign,
he's responsible for his own life, he makes his own choices and he becomes a sinner on
his own, and he believes on his own and he exercises faith on his own, and he is saved
by pulling himself up by his own bootstrap, that is to accommodate the idea that is behind
that whole system, and that is we can't make God responsible for evil.
I really think that Arminian theology, for the most part, is a device to get God off
the hook.
And how do they do it?
Well the bottom line is, God is not responsible for evil, you are.
That really doesn't help because why did God create creatures who would be responsible
for evil knowing what they would do?
Just backs the responsibility back to Him.
The popular way nowadays that people in that category who don't want God to be responsible
for evil in the world is to say that either He didn't have the knowledge that evil was
coming, or He doesn't have the power to deal with it.
One of the two.
Either He in His creation made everything perfect and didn't know about evil's future
existence, and so it caught Him off guard.
Or He knew but He didn't have the power to stop it.
Or He purposely limited His power to stop it for some higher value.
Now those are the kinds of things you have to deal with in this argument.
Either God didn't know, didn't have the power, chose not to use the power because He had
something even more important than evil, something of higher value in view.
These kinds of criticisms are supposed to get God off the hook.
But what they do is reinvent God.
You reinvent a God who is not all-knowing.
You reinvent a God who is not all-powerful.
That's the only way out and that's why that kind of theology exists.
But let's follow along with let's call the group one...the fact that God hasn't got the
knowledge, that He doesn't have the information when He creates so He doesn't know really
what's going to happen.
This would fit into the system called process theology.
Process theology is a group that have reinvented God as a deity in progress.
He is not the God today that He was yesterday because He knows more today because more has
happened today.
And He's finding it out as it happens.
This is also what Openness Theism believes, that God is in process, He is not now what
He used to be, He's better now, the process has really helped Him, but He is not what
He will be a week from now because there will be more things that He'll discovered as history
unfolds.
And with the unfolding of history came the unfolding of evil, and so God is off the hook
because God just didn't know.
God couldn't know because He couldn't know what hasn't happened, that is the Openness
approach.
God can't be responsible for evil.
Evil exists and therefore God couldn't have known that it was coming until it showed up.
In fact, they'll go so far as to say He hoped the best for Adam.
Humm...so much for positive thinking even on God's part.
He's not omniscient so when evil showed up, He had to come up with Plan B which was the
cross.
Well you get the picture.
These are people who lack a true and biblical view of God.
They also lack a God-focused, God-exalting, God-dominated view of the universe.
They look at things from a man-centered perch and they need to be certain that God doesn't
violate any of their rules.
It can't be true that God has both a full knowledge of evil and the full power to prevent
it and still let it come into existence because that means He ordained it.
If He had the full knowledge of it and the full power to deal with it and it exists,
then He ordained it.
That's more than an Arminian can swallow.
Either He didn't have the knowledge, or He didn't have the power, so you have to reinvent
God.
There are people actually who aren't even that sophisticated, they're just short answer
folks.
We hinted at them earlier.
You say, "Where did evil come from?"
And they'll say, "Oh it came from Adam and Eve."
Really?
How did it get introduced to Adam and Eve?
"Well, oh yeah, that's right, it came from the snake."
Well how did the...how did the snake get to a place where he could be embodied by Satan
and how did Satan get to be Satan in which he was tempting people to do evil?
"Oh well, he came from...oh, he came from heaven, didn't he?"
So where did evil originate?
Evil originated where?
In heaven?
Yes, evil originated in heaven in an angelic rebellion right under the nose of God.
You think that was a shock?
Then you don't have a God who is absolutely omniscient.
You think God couldn't stop it once it got going?
Couldn't put an end to it right on the spot?
Then you have a God who is not all powerful.
No matter how you deal with it, if you sustain the biblical doctrine of God, God becomes
ultimately responsible for the existence of evil.
You remember Rabbi Kushner(?) in the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People?
A lot of things wrong with that book.
The thing that's wrong with the title is there are no good people.
But let's grant him his title, When Bad Things Happen To Good People.
What he does is reinvent God.
He reinvents God.
God doesn't have the knowledge and God doesn't have the power.
So let's not hold Him responsible for what He doesn't know and can't deal with.
One writer, Ledonitz(?), looked at this problem and said, "God created the best of all worlds
that He could make, He couldn't do any better."
Really.
Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism other sort of ancient philosophies said, "God had to deal
with two co-eternal and independent realities good and evil...co-eternal, independent, that
is always existing.
Well none of these answers is adequate.
All these answers come from people who lack a fixed God-centered view of reality and they
have to abandon a biblical view of God.
But many of the people who offer these kind of answers declare their faith in the Bible
and the God of the Bible, but they expect the God of the Bible to be dragged into a
human court, a court of human reason to be judged by a moral law lower than himself.
Wow.
Somehow God is a higher being, but we have a higher law.
We're going to acknowledge that God is the eternal God, but we're going to hold Him accountable
to our understanding of justice.
Now when you boil all this down, there are a number of categories in which theodicies
can be created.
Let me just give them to you.
This is a little seminary class, folks, hang on.
The first category is metaphysical...metaphysical.
That is to say evil is inevitable.
It is a corollary of good.
It is necessary.
It's Yin Yang.
It's a necessary opposite of one thing that exists by the very metaphysics of its existence,
the opposite can exist as well.
It is not that God created evil.
It is not that God ordained evil.
It is that evil is because good is.
It is simply a negation.
It is simply a privation.
It is the absence of the opposite of.
If you have an infinity, you have a finitude.
If you have a good, you have an evil.
There's some truth in that to some limited degree metaphysically.
There is also the more theological approach to that metaphysical idea and it is this,
that because God created humanity good, the potential for evil existed within that creation
and man exercising his will chose the evil.
So it didn't really come from God, it came from man.
It didn't really come from God, it came from Lucifer who made the same choice in heaven.
That was strongly the argument of Augustine and Aquinas in ancient times.
And there is truth in that.
There is the holiness of God and there is the sinfulness of the creature.
But it leaves too much to metaphysical inevitability and it asks the question...if because good
exists and evil then must exist, is that perpetually true?
And when we get to heaven and the new heaven and the new earth because that is eternal
and perfect good, will we always be staring down the barrel of potential evil again because
it's a metaphysical necessity?
There's a second kind of theodicy.
Let's drop the metaphysical approach to theodicy and let's introduce the autonomous theodicy,
or theodicies.
A number of people come into this category to develop their theodicies.
This is the category that suggests the cause of evil is the abuse of free will.
And again we're back to our Arminian friends.
This is the abuse of free will.
And this basically says the highest good to God is free will.
Free will trumps everything on God's scale, even evil.
God could have prevented evil, but He wanted free will to exist and when He allowed free
will to exist, therefore evil exists because those free and autonomous creatures choose
evil.
And because free will was more important as a reality than eliminating evil, evil exists.
Evil exists because God exalts free will.
Free will trumps evil on God's value scale so that God had to allow for the possibility
of evil in order to preserve the more highly prized autonomy that protects Him from injustice.
Again, the bottom line is you can't make God responsible for anything, so the greatest
good in the creation is free will...angels have a free will, at least initially, humans
have a free will, they make choices, that's the greater good, that's the higher value
to God even if it means sin and evil exist.
Humans must have the self determined freedom to act.
If God acts as a primary cause for people's choices, they would not be free.
If God decided they would be coerced and compelled and that would violate their will and we should
have a completely free will.
That's the highest good.
This gets God off the hook again, at least it appears to on a shallow level.
But again, it requires reinventing a God...listen to this...who values your will over His own.
This is inventing a God who values everybody's over His own and that's not the God I just
read about in the Scripture.
And anyway, if God knew people would choose sin and hell, why did He go ahead and create
them anyway?
And why did He design free will?
He could decide what the noblest of all virtues was, why make it free will if it's going to
end up like this and you're going to have to go to Plan B just to recover from the exercise
of these myriad free wills?
So you can see that an autonomous theodicy as a category has to deny the direct involvement
of God as He is revealed to be in the Old Testament.
Does He not know what people are going to do?
Or is giving them the freedom to do it more important than the presence of evil?
If God has both knowledge and power, then He had to give men the free will to start
with and He knew exactly what they would do with it and He went ahead and gave it to them
and therefore in the end He had to ordain evil.
It doesn't solve any problem except to diminish the glory of God.
To design a God with limited knowledge, to design a God with limited power, to design
a God who is more concerned about the will of every single human being than His own will
is to design a God that is not the biblical God.
If God is not in total control of evil, if He has not ordained it, listen, and if He
does not have it under complete control at every millisecond of history, then this universe
is out of control at the most crucial point.
If God is not in control of this completely, then how and when will He get the knowledge
and the power to get it under control?
And I would ask you this.
Would you rather have a God trying to get control of evil, or a God completely in control
of it?
Take your choice.
But the God of the Bible is complete control of evil for His own purposes.
It is really heresy to say that the world is full of evil apart from a predetermined
plan and purpose by God that is far above the willy-nilly choices of people.
So what do we know up to now?
Evil exists.
God exists.
God wills evil to exist.
He did not create it.
He could not create it.
But He did not prevent it.
He ordained it.
He willed it.
Here it comes, listen carefully...because He had a purpose for it....He had a purpose
for it...a purpose.
This is critical.
He had a purpose for evil.
What is that purpose that God had for evil?
Before I answer that question and that's the fourth in our little outline, let me read
the Westminster Confession from the seventeen hundreds, some great theologians and biblical
scholars put this together, listen carefully.
"God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely and
unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.
Yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will
of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second-hand causes taken away, sinfulness
proceeds not only from the creature...proceeds only from the creature and not from God who
being most holy and righteous neither can be the author and approver of sin.
But then...says the Westminster Confession...all that God decrees and all that God providentially
brings to pass is all to the praise of His glory."
And they got it right.
The reason for God ordaining evil is for the praise of His glory.
Let me ask you a simple question to help you answer the question...the bigger question.
Is God more glorious because of sin existing or less glorious?
Pretty easy question to answer, isn't it?
That really is the ultimate question.
Throughout all the eons of eternity will God receive more glory from His creatures because
sin existed, or less?
And, friends, that's really all that matters is the eternal glory of God.
So it's fourth down and we're on the ten-yard line and I'm pulling out the winning play
and we're going for six for the victory.
Turn to Romans 3 and I want you to track with me a little bit.
Can't take time to develop all of this, but I'm going to give you a good start.
Wish I could build context, we don't have time.
But let's look at chapter 3 verse 5.
Opening statement, "But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what
shall we say?"
Grab that phrase.
Our right...unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God.
And Paul uses the first of a series of verbs, this one happens to be sunistemi translated
"demonstrates" in the New American Standard.
It is a verb that means to disclose, to reveal, to put on display, to show.
Our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God.
Another way to say that would be, "Would you really understand the righteousness of God
if you didn't understand unrighteousness?"
Isn't there something to be gained by the contrast?
Paul has been showing that God is faithful to His promises to Israel and their sin and
unbelief cannot alter God's covenant, cannot alter God's faithfulness.
God is righteous.
God will do what He said for Israel and even Israel's unrighteousness cannot cancel God's
righteousness, but rather gives Him opportunity to demonstrate that righteousness.
Even Israel's departure from the truth does no damage to God's truth or God's glory, Paul
shows.
So in a particular case with regard to Israel, their unrighteousness only made God's righteousness
all the more glorious.
And in general, unrighteousness only makes righteousness the more wondrous.
And so God by allowing unrighteousness is demonstrating righteousness.
Turn to chapter 5 verse 8.
Here comes that word "demonstrates" again.
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us."
Would we understand righteousness without unrighteousness?
Would we understand love without sin?
Would we understand the love of God in Christ to us if we did not understand how sinful
and undeserving and wretched we are?
Would we understand the significance of the sufferings of Jesus Christ on the cross for
us?
Not at all.
The cross is the greatest display of the love of God, it is a massive display of the love
of God against the backdrop of sin.
Our being sinners, our being enemies allows God to put His love on open display.
So, Paul says God demonstrates His righteousness in a context of unrighteousness.
God demonstrates His love in a context of hate among enemies.
Turn to chapter 9...chapter 9.
Here again translators of the NAS have helped us again by using the word "demonstrate,"
this time the verb is endeiknumi , it's a synonym for sunistemi , it means the same
thing.
What if...verse 22, Romans 9, "What if God although willing to demonstrate His wrath
and to make His power known endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction
and He did so in order that He might make known...there's a synonym for demonstrates
again, phaneroo ...the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy which He prepared beforehand
for glory."
Now follow this.
Again we see God allowing sin to put on a display, to put on a demonstration.
What if, although willing, please, willing would be better translated determining, determining.
"What if God determining to demonstrate, to display, to openly show His wrath and make
His power known endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?"
Listen to this.
God allowed evil to put His righteousness on display.
God allowed evil to put His love on display.
And God allowed evil to put His wrath on display.
That's verse 22, to demonstrate His wrath.
And by doing that, He put His holiness on display.
Would we know God the way we know God without sin?
Of course not.
We wouldn't know that He is as righteous as He is, as loving as He is, and as holy as
He is.
God allowed sin so that He could display His wrath.
His holy anger over sin, His judgment on sinners...no sin, no display of righteousness, no display
of love and no display of holiness.
God endured sin.
I love the way it's phrased, "He endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for
destruction."
It was a thing that God had to endure.
His holy nature had to endure it.
He endured it patiently so that in the end He could display His wrath and its full eternal
power.
But not just His wrath.
Verse 23, "And He did so in order that He might make known," we could translate this
demonstrate as well, "The riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy."
To display His mercy.
God also willed to make known, gnorizo , to...to display His mercy on the vessels which He
had prepared beforehand for glory, that's election.
No sin, no mercy...no grace, no forgiveness.
No salvation.
But it is God's nature to manifest His righteousness and to display and manifest His love, and
to display and manifest His wrath, and to display and manifest His grace and His holiness.
Listen, the whole reason God ordained evil to exist was for His own glory sake, so that
forever and ever holy angels and redeemed saints would give Him glory in full comprehension
of all His attributes.
Prior to sin God was not worshiped fully for His righteousness against the background of
unrighteousness.
He was not worshiped nor could be fully for His love until He demonstrated the kind of
love that loves enemy, rebel sinners.
He was not worshiped fully for His holiness until His wrath displayed how He hated sin.
And He was not worshiped for His grace until He displayed forgiveness and mercy on the
elect.
In every case there is this great disclosure of the nature of God.
Why?
To display His glory.
Paul gives us a demonstration of this.
Go back to verse 17, an illustration and he draws it from Exodus chapter 9 and verse 16.
"For the Scripture says to Pharaoh...here's a perfect illustration...for this very purpose
I raised you up."
Wow, God raised up Pharaoh?
God was in charge of Pharaoh being born, growing up in a royal family, ascending to the throne
of Egypt?
And then being the ruler over the exiled children of Israel, and then making life unbearable
for them and then all the plagues, and then all the rest that followed, and the exodus
and the drowning of Pharaoh and his entire army?
You mean God raised him up?
Yes, "For this purpose I raised you up," and here comes our word again, to do what?
"To demonstrate My power in you."
And it was the power of judgment and it was the power of salvation, Passover, the slain
lamb, the blood on the doorposts, that is the greatest Old Testament symbol of salvation,
is it not?
I raised you up to display My wrath and to display My grace.
Why, God?
End of verse 17, "That My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth."
In the end, God does everything for His own glory and He has been glorified throughout
the whole earth by His people and He will be in the millennial earth and in the new
heaven and the new earth.
The greatest good, dear ones, is God's glory.
The greatest good is God's glory.
And if you don't understand that, then you don't have a God-centered world view.
So how do we respond to that?
Go back to verse 15...or, 14.
Are you struggling with that?
Are you saying it doesn't seem fair?
Verse 14, "What shall we say?
There's no injustice with God, is there?"
No, no, no, no.
We can't accuse God of being unrighteous.
He has a right to do what He wants.
I'll have mercy on whom I have mercy.
I'll have compassion on whom I have compassion.
It doesn't depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
Verse 18, "So then He has mercy on whom He desires.
He hardens whom He desires.
You will to me...you will say to me then, why does He still find fault?
For who resists His will?"
Are you going to argue with God.
Are you going to debate the point that God did what He wanted to do?
And he reaches right back to what we read earlier, verse 21 from the Psalms, "Does not
the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable
use and another for common use?"
Are you forgetting who's in charge?
"And He did it all," verse 23, "that He might make known the riches of His glory."
There's no other explanation.
It reminds me of Job, doesn't it you?
Job has all that trouble that God allowed to come into his life.
Satan comes down, kills everybody in his family except his wife who was a pain.
Told him to curse God and die.
Takes away everything he owns.
Gives him all kinds of illnesses.
And then he gives him a bunch of stupid friends who give him bad answers, and bad theology.
We're only valuable as long as they sat in silence for seven days, and as soon as they
opened their mouth, all wisdom left.
He's all alone.
He's trying to sort out what's going on.
And he wants an answer from God.
It doesn't seem right.
Doesn't seem fair.
And God finally speaks to him in Job 38, "The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind," Job
38, "'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?'"
What an introduction.
Do I hear somebody down there mumbling?
"Gird up your loins like a man and I'll ask you, you instruct Me.
'Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?'"
That is to say, "If I needed advice from you, I'd have gotten it.
I created everything without you.
Tell Me if you have understanding.
Who said it was measurements since you know?
Who stretched the line on it?
Where were its bases sunk?
Who laid the cornerstone when the morning star sang together and all the sons of God
shouted for joy?
Who enclosed the sea with doors and bursting forth it went out from the womb and I made
a cloud its garment, thick darkness its swaddling band."
The language is just rich.
Verse 12, "Have you ever in your life commanded the morning?
Have you ever caused the dawn to know its place, Job?
Have you ever entered into the springs of the sea, verse 16, or walked in the recesses
of the deep?
Have the gates of death been revealed to you?
Have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Have you understood the expanse of the earth?
Tell Me, if you know so much."
Wow, this is what I call tough talk.
"So, Job, where's the place to the dwelling of light?
Where is the source of light?
Where does light come from?
And by the way, in verse 25, who has a cleft or a channel for the flood and a way for the
thunderbolt to bring rain on the land without people?
Can you bind...in verse 31...the chain of the Pleiades, and loose the cords of Orion?
And lead forth a constellation in its season and guide the Bear with her satellites?
Can you run all the bodies moving in orbit in space?
Can you command the clouds...in verse 34...and tell them what to do with water?"
Oh, let me get a little simpler, verse 1 of chapter 39, "Do you know the time the mountain
goats give birth?
Can you count the months they fulfill, or do you know the time they give birth?
And who set a wild donkey free, and who loosed the bonds of the swift donkey?"
I mean, it's just amazing, this is just tough talk.
You have no right to question Me.
Chapter 40 verse 1, "The Lord said to Job, 'Will the fault finder content with the Almighty?'"
In verse 4, "Okay, Job says to the Lord, 'I'm insignificant, what can I reply to You?
I lay my hand on my mouth.'"
He's done.
Tough talk is I do what I do because I'm God.
I do what I do for My glory.
And Job got it.
Chapter 42, and you have to...you have to get the end of it, verse 1, "Job answered
the Lord, said, 'I know You can do all things.'"
I affirm that You're the God that Scripture says You are and that no purpose of Yours
can be thwarted.
Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?
Therefore I have declared that which I do not understand, things too wonderful for me
which I didn't know.
This is the right response, I don't even know what I'm talking about.
Hear now and I'll speak, I'll ask you and do you instruct me?
And then I love this.
"I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, now my eyes sees Thee, therefore I retract
and I repent in dust and ashes."
Tough talk and Job buckles and says "God, I have no right to question You, You are God
and You have every right to put Your glory on full display."
And evil makes that happen.
We will spend forever and ever in the presence of God extolling Him in ways that never would
be possible had He not allowed and ordained without ever creating or being the source
of it the evil that temporarily dominates the creation.
And in His perfect timing, it will all be over and He will destroy this entire universe
in a holocaust described by Peter as the elements melting with fervent heat and the creation
of a new heaven and a new earth in which only eternal righteousness exists, but we will
forever worship with an understanding of the full display of His glory.
Father, we thank You for the insight that comes to us from Your Word.
You've told us why.
It's not left to mystery.
I'm God, I do what I do for My own glory.
And how wonderful is it that You have chosen us to be part of that eternal assembly who
will give You glory and who will sing praise to the Lamb who was slain.
We thank You for the power in the truth.
Help us to help others, to answer the deep questions with the straightforward revelation
that You've given us.
We are in awe, O God, that You have chosen us to be a part of that redeemed community
who will understand forever the glory that came and was fully displayed because of sin.
What a privilege.
We thank You in Christ's name.
Amen.
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War for the Planet of the Apes Trailer 2 REACTION - Duration: 6:06.
Wow, I bet Fox is sorry they waited to debut this trailer until the middle of the day!
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Lean Bulk Day In The Life: Full Day Of Eating - Duration: 8:59.
Yo, what's going on guys?
Troy here and I'm going to walk through an entire lean bulking day in the life.
And I've actually figured out my exact calories.
And, by the way, my throat is really bad right now.
I've been super sick the last couple days.
Definitely don't feel 100 percent, but I'm going to try to power through this day, get
in a good workout, still get in my macros.
That's what this shit's all about.
Persevering through obstacles - my dad actually came to visit me and he was really sick when
he came down and apparently he gave me whatever the hell he had, which is something not fun
to deal with.
So my throat is all hoarse and I really can't breathe at night.
But, nonetheless, I'm going to power in 3,000 - excuse me - 3,380 total calories today.
So I just woke up and it is about 8:30 AM.
Slept in a little bit because I feel like shit.
So step number one is - well, I drank two bottles of water.
This is my second bottle of water right here.
I took my digestive enzymes.
And let me show you the macros and what I'm eating for meal number one, so here it is.
This is like a little omelet thing with three whole eggs and three ounces of grilled chicken,
a cup and a half of brown rice and about two tablespoons of olive oil.
And of course I took my digestive enzyme before that.
So the total macros on this are 40 grams of protein, 70 grams of carbs, 35 grams of fat
for a grand total of 755 calories.
Adding in the olive oil to this meal gave it a really easy, you know, 240 calories.
So highly recommend if you guys are struggling to get in all your calories, just consume
more olive oil and coconut oil throughout the day.
So I'm going to down this meal and probably wait about 30 minutes or so, drink more water
and then I'm going to head to the gym and do - I believe I'm doing back and biceps today.
My workout schedule has been all messed up because I missed a few workouts when I was
sick the last couple of days, so I think I'm feeling back and bits today or potentially
push and pull.
Let me see how I feel in about 30 minutes.
But I will see you guys in a bit.
I'm going to show you the exact pre-workout I'm taking - my little pre-workout regimen.
Show you some gym highlights as well.
We are about to go to the gym - do a little push/pull workout.
Doing the Bang Master Blaster.
Kind of a funny name.
So since I'm not feeling very well, we'll go about 1.25 scoops.
And I think I showed you this in another video, but this profile's really good - 6 grams citrulline,
5 grams creatine, 2.5 grams beta alanine.
It's got obviously some good caffeine in it.
So this will power me through my workout sick.
And then what I do is I actually add about a teaspoon of tyrosine.
Tyrosine helps boost your dopamine.
Really important when you're trying to get a lot of work done, helps with motivation,
all that good stuff.
And branched-chain amino acids, we're going to add a little bit extra because I'm sick,
so add about another 3 grams of branched chain amino acids.
And we are off to the gym for a push/pull workout.
All right guys, just got back from the gym.
Did a little push and pull.
Also worked out my arms.
Did it really - I've never done that before, where I go resistance band right after doing
weight training.
It felt really good.
Definitely going to keep on doing with in my arm training routine.
And right here is some Jamba Juice.
So what I did post workout, I decided to fill up on a lot of carbs, so this beast right
here, Island Pitaya bowl.
It has - let me see, I already wrote it down here - 100 grams of carbs right here, so perfect
for post-workout, 5 grams of protein, 10 grams of fat.
And then for my protein, I got this from Whole Foods - really shitty protein - but I'm going
to do a scoop and a half of this, so that will be 40 grams of protein.
And this stuff is next level, collagen amazing for your joints, especially - like even right
now I'm sick and my joints feel kind of stiff and just kind of feel shitty.
So this is going to help me with my joints.
I've been trying to take this every single day for - I think I've been doing it for about
the last month or so.
So my throat feels like shit.
I'm going to go relax for a little bit and then get some work done and continue pounding
away the calories.
So it's about an hour and a half since my last meal and I'm loading up on more carbs.
So this is actually vegan macaroni and cheese, so this is 70 grams of carbs - really good.
You get it at Whole Foods.
If anybody is lactose intolerant or if you just want to change it up and have a healthier
kind of macaroni and cheese - definitely recommend this recipe.
So I think it's like Daiya brand D-A-I-Y-A.
So vegan macaroni and cheese - about a cup and a half.
And we also have 3 and a half ounces of grilled chicken, so some healthy grilled chicken and
macaroni and cheese.
So for the day we're at 115 grams of protein, 245 grams of carbs and 65 grams of fat, so
going to try to get in the rest of my macros for the day I would say in two meals and probably
one snack.
So about 4:30 right now I will see you guys on the next meal.
All right guys, I am back and very hungry, so this meal is really boring.
I kind forgot to buy groceries yesterday and I barely have any food lying around.
So I was able to muster up - as you can see it's about ' so this is leftover salmon, so
it's about 3 ounces of salmon and 2 ounces of grilled chicken and then I put a bunch
of olive oil all over about a cup and a half of brown rice.
Give you guys a nice little angle there.
And then I'm going to finish it up with some pineapple chunks.
So keeping it pretty clean and pretty healthy.
So this is going to get me up to 150 grams of protein, 345 grams of carbs, and 90 grams
of fat total for the day, so I've got about 50 grams of protein left, about 50 grams of
carbs and about 10 grams of fat, so got about one meal left.
I'm going to get some work done here.
Pound down some salmon, some brown rice, some chicken, some pineapple.
And once again I'm going to make sure I take my digestive enzymes, so my body can absorb
all these nutrients.
All right guys, just got back from doing a little bit of work.
It is about 12:30 AM and I got a few little snacks here when I was doing some work.
I got chocolate coconut water - one of my favorite things to drink after a hard day
of workouts.
Then I had a peanut butter cream Power Crunch bar.
Just quick, easy snacking on the go.
So that brought me up to 165 grams of protein, 400 grams of carbs, and 100 grams of fat.
So my last meal of the day is kind of - I want to say not very typical at all for me.
I have this kind of like, soup thing that I got from my girlfriend's mom.
I guess she made it.
And I think it's - what is this called?
Chau.
Chau.
They actually make fun of this in the movie The Hangover.
So it's like rice and shrimp and fish and carrots and potatoes, so I have about 200
calories left or so.
I probably going to be a little bit under my protein quota of the day of 200 grams,
but I'll be over on my carbs and a little bit over on my fat.
So this has some good quality protein though - some shrimp and I guess there's some fish
floating in there somewhere.
So this could be my last meal of the day and I'm going to try to get some good sleep because
my throat is really raspy right now.
So going to pound down some chow and go to bed.
So thank you so much for watching.
If you want to see more of these complete-day-in-the-life videos, let me know in the comments below.
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God's Own Defense of Scripture, Part 1 (Psalm 19) - Duration: 1:03:35.
In the early years of Grace Church there were many things that were foundational, obviously.
They are still foundational.
Those things don't change.
And as I have said through the years, there are some pastors who pastor different churches
in different places.
My Dad was like that.
He pastored here and there and hither and yon, pastoring quite a number of churches
in different places.
I've had the privilege of pastoring different churches in the same place.
But there are vastly different churches that have occupied the 35 years that I've been
here.
The congregation shifts and moves.
I'm the fixed point which is a little bit different than the normal pastoral experience
moving from place to place.
And if I were to move from place to place, through the years I would feel like I needed
to go back and lay the foundations that were basic and important and God blessed in other
places.
And because I've stayed in the same place, I've tended not to do that but being reminded
again that the congregation has changed so frequently through these years, particularly
in the rapidly changing population of Southern California, that it's good thing to go back
and re-grasp some of the great sections of Scripture that laid the foundation for all
the work that God has done here.
Now obviously, the most important element in the ministry of Grace Community Church
is our commitment to the Word of God.
And I have battled for the truthfulness of the Word of God, the priority of the Word
of God, the centrality of the Word of God all the years that I've been here.
And the battle shifts and moves and the front changes from time to time.
But there is also the necessity of affirming the truthfulness, the priority, the centrality
and the glory of Scripture, nor as an end to itself but as a means to an end.
It is the means by which people are saved and sanctified and equipped and trained and
motivated and given the hope of glory.
It is not the end but it is the single means by which God does all His work.
It is the Spirit using the Word of God, the Word rightly understood and applied.
And so, from the very beginning, back in February...February 9 th of 1969 when I came here, we have in
every service opened up the Word of God.
We want to hear God speak.
We know that He does His work through His Word.
The Bible, the Word of the one true and living God, is the truth and the only source of truth
that convicts of sin, warns of judgment, saves the sinner, purifies, cleanses, matures the
believer and gives the hope of eternal glory.
And because it is the revelation of God by which God does His work to His own ever-lasting
glory, it is the priority for the church and for every believer.
It is also always under attack, always under assault by Satan and his demons and the people
in the kingdom of darkness.
Attacks on the Bible have never ceased, they've only accumulated through the years.
In the early years, the Bible was attacked as to its veracity, its truthfulness, as to
its inspiration, its inerrancy.
It was attacked as to its completeness.
Is it all the revelation we have?
Or isn't God giving more?
Aren't there more revelations in visions and dreams and words of wisdom and words of knowledge?
And is the Bible the singular inspired text of God, or are there not other texts that
are equally inspired of God?
Is the Bible relevant?
Is not the fact that it is an antiquated book, an ancient book, if you will, written in another
context in other languages in another time, in another place, doesn't that set it on the
shelf and make it virtually irrelevant to this modern world?
And is the Bible actually comprehensible?
Is it clear?
Can it be understood?
Through the years we have gone to battle on all these kinds of issues.
The early part of my ministry here was directed at the issue of inerrancy.
Is the Bible inerrant?
That is, in its original autograph without error in all that it says and all that it
affirms?
That battleground launched a ten-year effort by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy
to defend the inerrancy of Scripture.
A hundred scholars were engaged in that formidable effort, defending the inerrancy, the inspiration
and thus the authority of Scripture down to every inspired word.
Then came another wave of attacks in the next decade, coming from those people who didn't
believe the Bible was all the revelation there was.
There was more revelation.
There were dreams and visions and experiences and the voice of God.
And revelation was continuing as God was speaking.
And that was very, very dominant in the Charismatic Movement.
There was associated with that a kind of spiritual movement, a kind of an inner-voice movement
where people began to develop the idea that you could listen for the voice of God and
He would speak to you quietly, privately in your own heart in some kind of quasi-audible
fashion, giving you verbal direction, by directing your thoughts in a certain way.
And this, too, was the revelation of God.
And if you wanted to really live the Christian life, you had to learn to listen for the voice
of God apart from Scripture.
In more recent years there's been an attack on the clarity of Scripture, coming from the
emerging church, telling us the Bible is not clear in anything to speak of, and so we want
to be open and generous and all-embracing and have a conversation with everybody because
we can't be sure about anything.
But in the middle of those kinds of battles, there has been another battle that just goes
along all the time, and that is assaults on the sufficiency of Scripture, as if somehow
the Bible wasn't enough.
You need more than the Bible to make the gospel attractive.
You need more than the Bible to solve your marital problems.
You need more than the Bible to get a grip on your own life.
You've got certain kinds of personality quirks that can only be resolved through psychology.
We have been embroiled in battles for the sufficiency of Scripture throughout the years,
it is an issue that is not only an issue in our culture, but it's been an issue all over
the world, everywhere I have gone.
Of necessity I have preached on the sufficiency of Scripture that the Word of God is true,
it is inerrant, it is inspired, it is complete.
It brings all revelation to an end.
Nothing more is needed than the truth of the of the Word of God applied by the Spirit of
God.
It is clear and it is sufficient...it is sufficient.
Not all these attacks, by the way, come from people outside Christianity, most of them
come from people who call themselves Christians, liberal theologians, experientialists, existentialists,
pragmatists, occultists, cultists, etc., etc., all claiming to represent God and attacking
Scripture's inspiration, inerrancy, historicity, canonicity, uniqueness, power, clarity and
sufficiency.
And so we're always going to need to go back and defend Scripture.
How do we do that?
Well there are two possibilities.
You could defend Scripture from outside Scripture, then you would make human reason the ultimate
determiner of Scripture's truth.
Far better to let Scripture defend itself and then you let Scripture be the ultimate
determiner of its own veracity.
And so we take what is called a presuppositional approach to the defense of Scripture, we presuppose
the truthfulness of Scripture.
We assume it to be so.
And any faithful, diligent exercise in studying Scripture will yield the fact that this is
truly the Word of God, we let Scripture speak for itself, not trying to defend Scripture
from outside Scripture, but from inside Scripture.
Let God speak in defense of the Word which He has written.
Tonight I want to talk to you about God's own defense of Scripture's sufficiency from
Psalm 19...Psalm 19.
Along the way, as we talk about this, I want to make a comparison with Psalm 119.
Psalm 119, much longer, 176 verses.
But basically built around the same theme as Psalm 19.
So we'll make some comparisons as we go with Psalm 119.
It goes without saying, and I think you're very much aware of it, that through the centuries
since the arrival of the revelation of God, God's true people have been the protectors
and preservers and the stewards of His truth.
By God's providential care they have guarded the truth to bring it down to us intact.
We have been given an incalculable treasure by those who were faithful to protect and
preserve and fight for Scripture through the centuries.
Many of them gave their lives, martyred, bloodied in defense of Scripture.
Martyred for no other reason than that they translated, printed, prepared the Word of
God so that people could hear His truth.
There's a high price that's been paid through the centuries by many, many souls to get the
Word of God into our hands.
I am sort of a minor collector of old Bibles.
I love Bibles, I love all Bibles.
But old ones are specially a treasure to me.
And I have been given by friends through the years because they know I love them, many
copies of very old Bibles going back a hundred years, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred
years.
If you were to go into the interior of the Master's Seminary, you need to do that some
day, you will find pages of ancient Bibles on the walls there, a reminder of the greatness
of the gift of God in giving us His Word and protecting and preserving it down through
the centuries.
I pick up those old Bibles and rummage through them and read notes in the margins and sometimes
notes written by the people who had those Bibles in ancient days and am reminded of
the price that was paid to get the Word of God into our hands, and how precious it was.
One of the men who gave me some of the most prized Bibles that I have is a Bible collector
now with the Lord.
He had one Bible that was most notable.
This is a Bible from the sixteenth century.
This is a Bible that is a large Bible, a very large in the way that they were first printed,
and if you open it you notice that it has been saturated with fluid up to about three
quarters of the page all through the entire Bible.
Every single page has a waterline about three quarters of the way up.
The interesting thing about it is that waterline is a faded red color or a pink color.
The history of that one Bible is a remarkable history.
When in the sixteenth century Bloody Mary was massacring Christians because of the Bible,
because of the Word of God, one of the things they liked to do was to take those believers
and before they would burn them at the stake, they would slit their wrists and they would
bleed them and fill a bowl with their blood and then take a Bible and dump it into the
bowl of blood.
One of such Bibles is in the hand of my friend and now in a museum.
Rummaging through the Bible, understanding the price that was paid for that Bible, was
a very, very moving experience which I had on many occasions.
This book has to be treated with a great amount of sacredness.
Listen to the testimony of God, Psalm 19 verse 7.
"The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.
The judgments of the Lord are true, they are righteous all together.
They are more desirable than gold, yes than much fine gold.
Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them Thy servant is warned.
In keeping them there is great reward.
Who can discern his errors?
Acquit me of hidden faults.
Also keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins, let them not rule over me.
Then I shall be blameless and I shall be acquitted of great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O
Lord, my rock and my Redeemer."
In Psalm 19, starting in verse 7 and running to the end of the chapter, I want to call
your attention to three specific emphases.
One, the sufficiency of Scripture.
Two, the value of Scripture.
And three, the right response.
That's what we're going to look at.
Now just backing up a little bit, you say, "What about the opening six verses?"
The opening six verses of Psalm 19 are also about God's revelation, but not His written
revelation.
The opening six verses are about God revealing Himself in creation.
"The heavens are telling of the glory of God.
Their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
Day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge.
There's no speech nor are there words, their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth and their utterances to the end of the world.
In them He has placed a tent for the sun which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
it rejoices as a strong man to run his course.
Its rising is from one end of the heavens and its circuit to the other end of them and
there is nothing hidden from its heat."
What is that talking about?
That is talking about the fact that God has revealed Himself in creation.
The heavens tell of the glory of God.
Who would not conclude that God is all glorious who looks into the heavens?
The expanse of the universe declares the work of His hands.
Every day, every night is a declaration of the mighty power of God.
He is revealed in His creation.
And it runs all through the conscious life that exists on this earth that God is a great
Creator and has told us a lot about Himself in His creation, about His power and His design
and His order, His intelligence, etc.
He uses an illustration of the sun.
The sun literally rising from one end of the heavens and its circuit to the other end of
them, nothing being hidden from its heat.
What he's talking about is something inside that's now known to be true, that the sun
has a massive orbit from one end of the infinite universe to the other and it drags our entire
solar system with it.
These kinds of discoveries that we make clearly indicate the greatness and the power of our
God.
God has then exalted Himself in nature.
He has revealed Himself in nature.
As Romans 1 says, we can know His eternal power and Godhead.
That is that He is the sovereign God and that He is powerful.
But more importantly and savingly, God has revealed Himself in Scripture.
There is His unwritten revelation and His written revelation.
And when you come to verse 7, the transition is made from God revealing Himself in nature
to God revealing Himself in Scripture...in Scripture.
The structure of these verses from verse 7 through 9, notice it there, is a series of
parallel statements, verses 7, 8 and 9.
Here there are six titles for Scripture...the Law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord
in verse 7.
In verse 8, the precepts of the Lord and the commandment of the Lord.
In verse 9, the fear of the Lord and the judgments of the Lord.
Six titles for Scripture.
Scripture is Law, testimony, precepts, commandment, fear and judgments.
There are also six characteristics of Scripture.
Notice, it is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean and true.
And there are six benefits of Scripture.
It restores the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, endures
forever and a final one, produces comprehensive righteousness.
That's what it means when it says righteous all together.
It converts, it makes wise, it brings joy, it enlightens, it purifies, it is relevant
in every time, it endures forever and it produces comprehensive righteousness.
This is magnificent.
Here you have God in His inimitable way speaking the vast glories of Scripture in brief sentences.
In a few words He captures the magnitude of the full sufficiency of Scripture.
Please notice one other component here.
Six times is repeated this phrase "of the Lord, of the Lord, of the Lord, of the Lord,
of the Lord, of the Lord."
Lest there be some confusion about who is the author.
It is redundant.
Six times the covenant name of Yahweh, the covenant name of the Creator/God is used.
Here then is God's own testimony to God's own revelation in Scripture, God's witness
to the sufficiency and the adequacy of His Word which restores the soul, makes wise the
simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, endures forever and produces comprehensive
righteousness.
This is sweeping even in just a few statements.
Let's take them one at a time.
First of all, the Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.
It is called the Law, torah , favorite biblical word for Scripture.
It identifies the Scripture as divine law, divine teaching, divine instruction.
The term means teaching.
That is to say it is God giving instruction to His creature.
Divine instruction, relative to man's life and conduct.
It is a complete explanation of God's will for man's life.
When you buy an appliance or you buy an automobile, or anything that is at all technical, you
get a manual along with it, you get an operator's manual so that the manufacturer can direct
you and instruct you in the proper use of what it is that you now possess.
The Bible is the manufacturer's manual for the proper operation of humanity.
It is God's instruction for how man is to live.
It is God's law for man's life.
That is one way to view Scripture.
It is that.
It is not only that, there are six descriptions of Scripture, but this is true of Scripture.
Scripture is like a many faceted diamond, we're going to look at six of those facets
as we examine this Psalm.
It is God's manual for man's life.
If man is to be everything that God wants him to be, if man is to reach the fulfillment
of God's intended creation for him, if man is to enjoy the fullness of God's blessing,
he must then abide by the instructions given by the manufacturer.
And this is the only manual...the law of the Lord.
As such, notice please, this characteristic, it is perfect, it is perfect.
James calls it the perfect law.
So he uses this same idea.
It is perfect.
I remember the first time I studied Psalm 19, many, many years ago, I wanted to really
know what perfect meant.
So I went back and I got all the Hebrew lexicons off my shelf and I remember spending several
hours chasing this word "perfect" all over the place, trying to wring out of it everything
that I could so I would have a grasp of it.
And after many hours of study, I came to the conclusion that what it means is perfect.
A bit disappointing after all the effort, but that's exactly what it means...perfect.
But, let me take you one step further.
Not perfect as opposed to imperfect, but perfect as opposed to incomplete.
Not perfect as opposed to imperfect, though it is that, but the primary thrust of this
Hebrew word is not about perfect as opposed to imperfect, but it's about perfect as opposed
to incomplete.
The best Old Testament scholarship gives this meaning, this Hebrew word means all sided...s-i-d-e-d,
all sided so as to cover completely all aspects of life.
It is comprehensive.
It is sufficient.
It leaves nothing out.
Yes, that is a feature of being flawless, but it says much more.
To say something has no flaws doesn't say that it's complete.
Yes the Scripture has no flaws but the issue here is that it lacks nothing.
Here is the manual for man's operation written by the manufacturer which leaves nothing needed
out.
And as the all-sided, fully sufficient, comprehensive, complete law of the Lord, it has the power,
here's the last phrase, verse 7, "to restore the soul."
This is the effect, the impact, or converting the soul...some of your texts may say.
The Hebrew term can be translated restoring, reviving, refreshing, or converting.
What the world really means is a total transformation...total transformation.
So, we're starting to build a really interesting case here.
We've got the Scripture which is God's instruction for man's life.
Nothing is left out.
It is comprehensive.
So comprehensive that it can totally transform...what?...the soul.
Now this introduces us to a Hebrew word nephesh...nephesh .
What does it mean?
Probably in your Bible, if you have a New American Standard or New King James or one
of those more contemporary translations, probably if you were to look at a Hebrew Bible and
compare it with your English version, you might find that the translators have translated
nephesh about twenty different ways in the Old Testament...person, self, heart, mind,
soul.
They translate it all kinds of ways but it always means one thing, the inner person...the
inner person...the inner person.
So what do we learn in this first statement?
The law of the Lord, Scripture, is sufficient to totally transform the whole inner person.
Powerful statement...powerful, powerful statement.
It's able to save.
It's able to regenerate.
It's able to convert.
It's able to transform.
And that gets repeated all through Scripture.
The sacred Scripture, 2 Timothy 3:15, the Scripture, the sacred writings, able to give
you the wisdom that leads to salvation.
It is able to convert you.
It is sharper than any two-edged sword, Hebrews 4:12 and 13, and it can cut you wide open
and unbare your sin.
And then it can regenerate and redeem and restore you.
The Scripture then is utterly sufficient for the conversion, transformation, restoration,
spiritual birth of the soul.
Peter puts it this way, 1 Peter 1:23, "Being born again not of corruptible seed but by
incorruptible by the Word of God."
We are regenerated, born again, given life by the Word of God which lives and abides
forever.
And this is the Word by which the gospel is preached to you.
That's why Paul says in Romans 1, "Not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it is the power of
God unto salvation."
It gives life.
It's powerful.
It gives life.
Let me give you an illustration of this in Romans 10...Romans 10.
If you're thinking how we're going to get through six, we're not.
Romans 10.
When I first did it, I did it in two messages and so I'll do that this time as well.
Romans chapter 10, really just an incredible chapter.
Paul says at the beginning of the chapter that his heart's desire and prayer to God
for Israel is for their salvation.
All right?
So you want Israel to be saved.
They're not saved.
The Jews are not saved.
They don't have their own special way of salvation apart from the gospel.
Their problem is not that they're not religious.
They're religious.
In fact, verse 2 says, "I bear them witness, they have a zeal for God, it's just not in
accordance with knowledge."
So having a zeal for God but not having the right knowledge doesn't save you.
What don't they know?
Well they don't understand God's righteousness.
They don't know how righteous God is.
They seek to establish their own righteousness.
So they don't know how righteous God is and they don't know how sinful they are.
That's a problem.
They didn't think God is as righteous as He is, so righteous that no one could ever earn
salvation.
They thought God was less righteous than He is, they thought they were more righteous
than they were, and so they could earn their salvation.
Therefore they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.
Furthermore, they didn't understand that Christ is an end of the Law for righteousness to
everyone who believes.
They didn't understand that salvation doesn't come by earning your salvation with God, it
comes only through Christ who brings an end to the law and provides the righteousness
that we could never earn if we only believed.
So they had their view of God wrong, their view of themselves wrong, their view of Christ
and his provision completely wrong.
They've got a problem.
They've got it all wrong.
They needed to believe in Jesus Christ.
They needed to believe in Jesus Christ.
Down in verse 9, "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart
that God raised Him from the dead, you'll be saved."
You have to believe in Jesus Christ, His resurrection, death and resurrection, confess Him as Lord.
Verse 10, "For with the heart man believes resulting in righteousness, with the mouth
he confesses resulting in salvation."
The Scripture says, "Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.
There's no distinction between Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in
riches for all who call upon Him."
Here it comes, "Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved."
You can't be saved unless you call upon the name of the Lord.
You can't be saved unless you believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and
confess Him as Lord.
You can't be saved unless you know that God is too righteous to accept your works and
you're too sinful to earn salvation and that your salvation can only come through faith
in Christ who provided a righteousness for you through His sacrifice.
So we need people to call upon the name of the Lord.
So what are we going to do?
How are we going to get them to do that?
Verse 14, "How shall they call upon Him in whom they haven't believed?
How shall they believe in Him whom they haven't heard?
How shall they hear without a preacher?"
They're going to have to hear the truth to believe the truth.
And to hear the truth, they're going to have to have somebody proclaim the truth.
And how are they going to proclaim the truth, verse 15, unless they're sent?
Just as it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of
good things."
Somebody has to go.
Somebody has to tell them the truth.
Why?
Go to verse 17, "Because faith, a faith that saves, comes from hearing and hearing by...what?...the
Word of Christ."
It comes by the Word of Christ.
There's only one way to be saved and that's to believe the truth.
The only way you can believe the truth is to hear the truth.
The only way you can hear the truth is for someone to declare that true Word.
Is Scripture powerful enough?
Is it the power of God unto salvation?
Is it powerful enough?
Is it enough to come here week after week after week and hear the Word of God?
Does that Word have the saving power of God in it?
According to the Scripture it does.
According to the testimony of God, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.
Does the Word of God have to be helped along because its somehow inept, inadequate, irrelevant,
antiquated?
Do we need somehow to package it in some culturally sensitive way to make it feel like everything
else in this culture feels to gain an entrance?
Do we have to beef it up by making it seem to promise health, wealth, prosperity, riches,
healing, as if God was some divine Mary Kay passing out pink Cadilacs?
Do we need to make syrupy, schmaltzy appeals to the emotions of people based on their feelings,
bruised egos, need for self-esteem, desire for trinkets and goodies and somehow alter
the hard gospel so people will buy it?
Does it have to be polluted with promises of material prosperity, material success?
Is it insufficient on its own?
I don't think so.
I think the testimony of God is unmistakably clear.
The Word itself is the sea where Christ the pearl rests.
The Word itself is the field where Christ the treasure is hidden.
Listen to the testimony of Psalm 119 and I'm only going to be able to read without comment
a few verses that support this point.
It is Psalm 119 that reiterates again and again these same truths concerning the Word
of God.
Verse 41, "May Thy lovingkindness also come to me, O Lord," listen, "Thy salvation according
to Thy Word."
Verse 50, "This is my comfort and my affliction, that Thy Word has literally given me life."
Verse 81, "My soul languishes for Thy salvation.
I wait for Thy Word."
Again the Word is linked to salvation.
"I cried to Thee," verse 146, "save me.
I shall keep Thy testimonies."
Verse 155, "Salvation is far from the wicked for they do not seek Thy statutes."
Salvation comes through the Word.
"I long for Thy salvation," verse 174, "O Lord.
And Thy law is my delight."
The Scripture, the law of the Lord, statutes of the Lord inseparable from salvation.
No wonder Paul said, "Preach the Word in season, out of season."
The law of the Lord is perfect, comprehensive, sufficient for the total transformation of
the whole inner person.
Whenever I preach this, I always think of this one man named Tim Evalina(?).
I was preaching in Sebring, Florida, many years ago.
And at the end of the message that I gave in this church, he came up and introduced
himself.
He said, "I have to tell you my story."
He said, "My entire family are Jehovah's Witnesses.
In fact, my family is responsible for the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses throughout
the state of Florida.
My job...he says...has been for years is to train all the Jehovah's Witness leaders, I
go from location to location to location training them."
But he said, "I have to tell you what's happened to me."
He said, "I was driving across Florida listening to the radio in a rental car.
And I turned on the radio and you came on.
I didn't know who you were.
And you made one statement.
You said Jesus is God.
And I said that's a lie and turned it off.
And then I turned it right back on again cause I was curious.
And you went on to show from the Bible that Jesus is God.
That was on a Monday."
And Grace To You happens to be all over Florida so if you keep moving you can find us.
He said, "I listened for five days that week to your program.
And all week you were showing that Jesus is God.
By Friday I was seriously grappling with that issue because Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe
that.
Monday was the second week of the series, I listened five more days.
Friday I knelt down beside a bed and I said, 'O God, Jehovah, whom I thought I served,
if indeed Jesus is God the Son, show me.'
That night my head was cleared, my heart was cleared, my soul was transformed and I embraced
Jesus Christ as my Savior."
And then he said, "I have a problem because I was going around training the Jehovah's
Witness leaders."
So he said, "I had to do some retraining."
So he said, "I started back trying to tell them all Jesus is God.
I was in odds with my wife, three sons and my parents and extended family and everybody
in my whole world.
I was called on the carpet, tried as a heretic and excommunicated from the movement."
He said, "My life is transformed."
He asked the question, "How do you reach a leader in the Jehovah's Witness Movement?"
Just let the truth of Scripture do its mighty work.
There's no subtle way to do that.
I can't orchestrate that.
He said, "Pray for my family, please pray for my family."
This has only been a few weeks.
I got a letter from him some months later telling me his wife and all three sons were
in Christ.
They were redeemed, serious dent in the J.W. system in Florida.
This is only an anecdote but it illustrates the amazing power of the truth to do its own
work energized by the Spirit in the heart.
I always think of him when I think of that statement in verse 7.
Number two...number two, Psalm 19, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul,"
listen to this one, "the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."
Testimony, this looks at Scripture not as God's divine law, but as God's own personal
testimony.
It is His self-revelation, it is His own witness.
It is God disclosing His character and His will.
So you look at Scripture not just as a manual for life, but as that which is a perfect reflection
of the nature of God.
This is God's own testimony to what is true concerning Himself and everything else.
When you read Scripture, you're getting to know God.
This is God's own testimony, His own self-disclosure.
And as such, it is sure.
Unlike other books, the Bible is perfect, comprehensive, complete, needs nothing.
Unlike other books, it is sure...what does that mean?
Unwavering, unmistakable, reliable, in a word, trustworthy...trustworthy.
I called the L.A.
Public Library one time and asked them how many books they had there.
And I think they told me something like 25 million books or something ridiculous that
were either there or accessible, several million there and accessible through other library
connections.
And I just said, kind of a funny thing to the lady I was talking to, I said, "How many
of them are always and only absolutely true?"
She said, "That's a strange question."
Well you just don't want to work through 25 million to try to find one that's always true.
And I suggested the answer was only one, that was the Bible, the Word of the living God.
It's always true.
It is Peter who says it's a more sure Word, right?
Second Peter 1, it's a more sure Word, more sure than signs, wonders, miracles.
The world by wisdom knew not God, 1 Corinthians 1, can't get to divine truth, spiritual truth,
eternal truth, you can't get to the way it really is apart from the Bible.
So, here is this wonderful self-disclosure, God's own testimony absolutely trustworthy.
You can trust all its statements, all its insights, all its promises.
And so it makes wise the simple.
I love the word "simple" in Hebrew.
The Hebrew language is a concrete language, not abstract.
The Greek language, a lot of abstractions.
But in the Hebrew language everything is sort of concrete, everything is tied down to something
tangible.
And the word simple, the root of the Hebrew word means an open door...an open door, because
an open door doesn't discriminate, right?
If the door is open, everything comes in, everything goes out, no discrimination.
That's a great word.
Do you ever hear anybody say, "Well, I have an open mind."
Well shut it because you've got to decide what to let in and what to keep out.
Having an open mind is not a virtue.
That's one step above being a moron.
Render a judgment on something.
It's like the people who say, "I am an agnostic," proudly, from the Greek, one who doesn't know.
They do, "I'm an agnostic."
You hear people say that.
You know what the Latin word for agnostic is?
Ignoramus.
You hear anybody say, "I'm an ignoramus?"
Really?
You have a door on your house and the reason you have a door on your house is to keep some
things in and some things out.
You want to keep the cool air in, the children and everything else that belongs to you.
And you shut the door to keep those things in.
You make a judgment as to when you open it and when you don't.
That's why you have a hole in it, right?
You don't live in your neighborhood with your door wide open and welcome everybody.
You'd be a fool.
Too much danger.
You make a discerning decision when you shut the door and that's a great analogy for the
mind.
The word "simple" meant naive, undiscerning, uninformed.
But the testimony of the Lord, the Scripture, is trustworthy and makes the simple wise.
Hebrew, chakam ...again very different than the Greek word, sophia , which is kind of
an esoteric word referring to wisdom.
Chakam is a word that means skilled in practical aspects of living.
You see, wisdom to the Hebrew mind was not some ethereal kind of thing.
Wisdom was living life in the right way, to produce the best and most beneficial results.
The art of living, mastering the art of living, living life to its fullest and best.
The Word of God is trustworthy, it can take the naive, inexperienced, undiscerning, uninformed,
ignoramus and make him skilled in the art of living.
In 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, there's a verse in that chapter that defines the response
of the Thessalonians to the gospel, it's verse 13.
"For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the Word
of God's message, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but for what it really is, the
Word of God," I love this, "which also energeia, energizes its work in you who believe."
The Word of God takes over and shapes your life and makes you skilled in the art of living.
This is the ability to make right choices.
This is the ability to see things the way they really are.
This is the ability to seize the moments in life on earth and to act with heavenly insight
and heavenly wisdom to apply the Word of God to every aspect of life.
Like babes desire the pure milk of the Word that you may grow, and as you feed on the
Word of God, you grow.
You grow in your discernment.
You grow in your mastery of the issues of life.
Do we somehow believe the Word of God doesn't do this?
This is what God says it does do.
Do we question that?
Do we need to put our trust in psychology, or sociology, or human wisdom for what it
takes to live our lives?
Do we need to learn some silly gimmicks, manipulating our own minds and the minds of others around
us?
Isn't the Word of God enough?
Again I call you to God's extended testimony in Psalm 119 in which He embellishes this
same truth.
Look at verse 27, maybe as a starting point, Psalm 119, "Make me understand the way of
Thy precepts so I will meditate on Thy wonders."
God, help me understand, give me understanding.
And of course, it comes through His precepts, another way to refer to the Word of God.
Verse 34, "Give me understanding that I may observe Thy law and keep it with all my heart."
Verse 66, "Teach me good discernment and knowledge for I believe in Thy commandments."
You can't separate knowledge, discernment, wisdom from Scripture.
Verse 98, "Thy commandments make me wiser than my enemies, they are ever mine.
I have more insight than all my teachers for Thy testimonies are my meditation."
That's true of a Christian in a university setting or any other setting with very sophisticated
intellectuals.
You know more than they do about the things that matter everlastingly.
Verse 104, "From Thy precepts I get understanding."
Verse 125, "I am Thy servant, give me understanding that I may know Thy testimonies."
God's testimony, God's Word, an understanding go together.
Well there are more.
Verse 169, "Give me understanding according to Thy Word."
Again, God's testimony is that if you want to be saved, you turn to the Word.
If you want to be wise, you turn to the Word.
Sufficient is the Word then, to give us salvation and skilled living in the wisdom of God.
Let me give you the third one tonight, okay?
Verse 8, "The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart."
Where do you go to find joy?
Where do you go to find happiness?
Where do you go to find relief from sorrow, relief from depression, relief from anxiety?
Where do you go?
The Psalmist says, the voice of God says, "Go to the Word."
Verse 8, "The precepts of the Lord..."
Precepts...what are those?
Principles, doctrines.
Here is the manual for man's living.
Here is God's self-revelation, His own testimony and here are doctrines, truths, absolutes
that are the guidelines, the requirements for blessing and for joy.
Divine statutes or precepts, same idea, principles, doctrines and they are right.
I love that word right, it doesn't mean right as opposed to wrong.
It means right in the sense of a right path.
Okay?
And there are some nuances in the Hebrew here, but it means the right path.
That is to say, the doctrines that the Lord has given are going to send you in the right
path.
Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path, more than that, the Word is the
path here.
The Word is the guide that shows the straight path to the divine end.
We're not left without principles for life.
People say, "Doctrine doesn't matter."
Oh it matters.
What does it mean to have a Bible and not understand its principles?
You don't want to wander around in a fog of human opinion.
You have a true Word to follow.
And what is the product of this if you go on the right path?
Rejoicing the heart.
True joy, true joy.
Jeremiah 15:16, Jeremiah said this, "Your Word was found, Your words were found and
did eat them and Your Word was in me, the joy and rejoicing of my heart."
Now understand Jeremiah's situation.
He's trying to proclaim the Word of God to a recalcitrant, rebellious, obstinate people.
They don't want it.
They don't want to hear it.
They resent it.
They hate him.
They finally throw him in a pit.
And what does he say?
If nobody listens, Your Word was found, I ate it and it is the joy and rejoicing of
my heart in the worst of circumstances where he's trying to deliver a ministry that nobody
wants, he has no popularity, no interest in what he's saying.
He ends up in a horrible situation and yet he's filled with joy because that's what the
Word does.
My joy comes from what I know to be true about God and His purposes.
When you have anxiety, when you have fear, when you have sorrow, when you have difficulty
in life, you go to the things that the Word of God affirms.
And you stand on those great promises and principles and doctrines.
They show you the right path, you walk in that path and it produces joy.
John writes, 1 John 1:4, "I write these things unto you that your joy may be full."
Joy, not a superficial giddy kind of thing, but a deep down settled confident peaceful
satisfaction that the goodness of God is unfolding in my life in good and bad circumstances,
that's the kind of deep joy.
I don't need voices from heaven.
I don't need miracles.
I don't need to talk to angels.
I don't need supernatural experiences, neither do you.
We don't need visions.
I don't need to have some kind of vision to boost up my faltering faith.
I know from the Word of God what is true, I know the path of truth in which I walk and
in that path of truth I find my heart rejoices.
Depression, anxiety, fear, doubt comes from not knowing, not believing, not trusting the
truth revealed in Scripture.
Follow the Word.
Walk in its precepts and you will know complete joy.
All our true pleasure, all our true delight comes from following the path laid out in
the Word of God, not from seeking self-fulfillment, self-esteem, personal purpose, self-indulgence,
self-satisfaction, not from getting miracles and things happening in your life that bring
you money, prosperity, health...no.
True joy, true pleasure, true delight comes by walking confidently in the path of biblical
doctrine and resting in the things that are true because God has declared them so.
Again, Psalm 19, one more time for tonight, affirms this, verse 14, "I have rejoiced in
the way of Thy testimonies as much as in all riches."
I rejoice in the way, the path that Your testimonies have led me as much as in all riches.
Verse 54, "Thy statutes," I love this, "are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage."
We come here on the Lord's day, we sing with all our hearts, great doctrinal truths, don't
we?
Because they are our joy.
They transcend all the petty issues of life.
Verse 76, "O may Thy lovingkindness comfort me according to Thy Word to Thy servant."
We all need comfort, they are always those times when life is very difficult for us,
we need comfort, he says, very simply, "My Thy lovingkindness according to Thy Word comfort
me."
I'm comforted in the loving kindness of God, that's a principle, that's a precept revealed
in Scripture.
Verse 111, "I have inherited Thy testimonies forever, for they are the joy of my heart."
They are the joy of my heart.
And 114 he says that the Word is his hiding place and his shield.
So the Scripture, source of true joy, true wisdom, and true transformation.
That is God's own testimony to His glorious Word.
Three more next time.
And then we'll see their value and our proper response.
Lord, it's been refreshing tonight to go back and wash ourselves again in the Word, to feel
the richness and the sweetness of these great statements in Psalm 19 and Psalm 119.
Thank You, Lord, for the fact that we can rest in these truths and we have, some of
us for a long, long years.
And we thank You that by this Word many, many are being saved and all who are saved are
being made skilled in the manner of holy living and being given joy as they walk in these
precepts.
What a gift Your Word is to us, to save, to sanctify and to direct and guide us toward
real deep abiding settled confident joy.
We find our life, our wisdom, our joy in Your Word.
It is enough, it is enough.
What more could we ask for?
Eternal life, true wisdom, everlasting joy, and that comes from Your Word.
Thank You, O God, for this great gift in Your Son's name.
Amen.
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Jeep Wrangler Superchips TrailCal (2015-2017 JK) Review & Install - Duration: 7:22.
I'm Ryan from extremeterrain.com, and this is my review and installation of the Superchips
TrailCal, fitting all 2015 and up JKs.
Today we're gonna talk through the installation of the TrailCal, which isn't much of an install
at all.
This is a one outta three wrench install.
You really just attach it onto the dashboard, plug it into the OBD-II port, but we'll talk
more about that in just a second.
We're also gonna talk through some of the features of the TrailCal.
Anytime you upgrade to a larger set of tires or change the gear ratio on your Jeep, it's
always a good idea to recalibrate the Jeep's ECU for those new parameters.
That's going to ensure that if you have an automatic transmission, that your shift points
are correct, and at the very least, ensure that your speedometer and odometer readings
are accurate.
Now you can make all of those changes with a Superchips FlashCal or with one of the other
calibrators on the market.
And those calibrators are really designed to plug into the Jeep, make some changes,
update the ECU, and then unplug it.
And you really throw that calibrator in your console or in your glove box, and you don't
use it very often after that, unless of course you wanna make some other changes.
And these calibrators don't just change for gear ratio and tire size, they'll also do
things like convenience options, like how long your lights stay on, your radio delay,
horn chirps, they'll adjust for idle for if you're winching and you want a little bit
more alternator output, TPMS systems.
They'll make a lot of other adjustments as well.
Now, the benefit to something like this, which is the TrailCal, is it does all the things
that the Superchips FlashCal is going to do.
But instead of just updating things, unplugging it, and throwing it in the center console,
this is something that's designed to be left on the dashboard, give you readings for all
of your gauges, give you digital readouts.
This will also allow you, with an additional module, to have virtual switches for lights
or lockers.
This is really going to give you a lot more control and a lot more information, all while
having that little screen up on the dash all the time, a touchscreen, that you can go in,
swipe through, and get a lot more information about your Jeep in real time.
Now, the difference between this, the TrailCal, and the TrailPaq is going to be that this
does everything that the calibrator does, that the FlashCal does, but the TrailPaq or
the TrailDash, is going to be more akin to the FlashPaq, which is going to also have
tunes.
Now the tunes are going to adjust for timing, fuel, a few other engine parameters.
You're going to wanna run a higher octane fuel, and you're going to get a little bit
more power out of your Jeep.
Now when we're talking about the 2015 and up JKs, which is what this does, you can't
just hook a tuner up and have things work, you actually have to swap out the ECU.
So if you are interested in getting tunes, if you want some additional power, you're
going to wanna go with the TrailDash and you are going to have to swap out your ECU.
If you're not interested in additional power, you just want a calibrator that is also going
to give you a lot of other information about your Jeep, then this is going to be a really
nice option.
So as I said, this is going to give you a ton of information about your Jeep.
You are going to have a five-inch color touchscreen, which is going to allow you to very easily
access all of that information.
It's going to read and clear "Check Engine" lights.
You are going to be able to control factory options on your Rubicon Edition Wrangler.
If you have factory lockers or sway bar disconnects, you can control that through here.
This is also going to have an additional video input, so you can actually run your auxiliary
reverse camera through this screen here.
But as we mentioned before, the real meat and potatoes of this, the real main point
of this, is to calibrate, so you're gonna be able to calibrate for a larger tire, you're
going to be able to calibrate for a different gear ratio, and you're going to be able to
change your TPMS settings with a download as well as all of those other convenience
features as well.
So this is a product that gives you a lot of calibration options as well as all of those
digital gauges to give you all of that information about your Jeep, which is really important
to have.
Even though Jeeps are built for off-roading, you are putting a lot of stress and putting
a lot of wear and tear on your vehicle when you are off-road, so being able to maintain
all of the parameters, all of the vital signs, if you will, of your JK is a really nice feature.
It gives you a lot more peace of mind when you are working your Jeep a little bit harder
than you normally do that you're not hurting anything.
As I said before, this is a very simple one out of three wrench install.
In fact, it's not much of an install at all, and you're going to be able to get this done
in less than half an hour.
The first step is going to be mounting the TrailCal onto your dash.
Now this does come with a suction cup mount that will very easily attach to the back of
the TrailCal itself.
From there, you'll just have to plug in the cord into the back of the TrailCal, run that
through the dashboard down to the OBD-II port, and plug it in.
And that's it.
That's really all there is to it.
From there, it's just turning it on, turning on the Jeep, which will give power to this,
and setting your parameters, doing all of your calibration, doing all the customization,
picking which gauges you wanna see, and actually starting to use this item.
Very, very easy to hook up, very easy to set up, and you'll be using this very, very quickly.
This comes in at right around $450, which is going to be, of course, more expensive
than the FlashCal because this does have the LCD readout, it does have all of the gauges
built into it.
So it's just a lot more hardware and also a lot more functionality, so it makes sense
that it's more expensive.
However, this is going to be about $150 less than the TrailDash, which is that unit that
we talked about before that has the built-in tunes that you'll also have to swap out your
ECU in order to use.
So if you are looking for those additional features, you can certainly go with that,
as I said, about $150 more.
If you're looking for a calibrator just to calibrate, you just want it to work, and you
don't want all these additional features, obviously, go with the FlashCal, go with one
of the other calibrators that are on the market.
But if you really like the functionality of this, you like having all the digital readouts,
you really wanna keep an eye on how your Jeep is doing, you wanna be able to look at all
those parameters, and you wanna be able to adjust them in real time, all the time, by
just reaching up and touching the touchscreen, I think this is a very nice option.
And honestly, I don't think that it's overpriced.
You're getting a ton of features out of this in a really nice, neat, convenient package.
I think this is fairly priced.
So if you're not looking to add a tuner onto your Jeep for more power, you just want something
that's going to calibrate, but you wanna be able to change those calibrations in real
time and have digital gauge readouts to give you a good idea of exactly what's going on
inside of your Jeep, I think this is going to be a very nice option for you.
So that's my review of the Superchips TrailCal, fitting all 2015 and up JKs, that you can
find right here at extremeterrain.com.
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For more infomation >> Крошка малыш Как БОСС молокосос Baby Boss Care Прием у доктора КАПРИЗЫ Мультик Игра для детей #ММ - Duration: 7:55. -------------------------------------------
How To Monetize Youtube Videos 2017 - Duration: 4:22.
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