Ultimate Marriage #28: Is the Bible Perfect, Reliable, and without Error?
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Summary
Is the Bible Perfect, Reliable, and Without Error? What does the Bible say about marriage, family, and the church? What does it teach us about the church, and what does it mean to be a Christian? What is the role of the Bible in our lives, and why is it so critical to our faith?
Transcript
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hey and welcome to ultimate marriage today we are talking about is the Bible
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perfect reliable and without error big conversation about the Bible today critical
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to your marriage critical to your family critical to your walk so we're excited to
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had that conversation. And a couple notes just before we get started. One, if you're watching
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this on YouTube, you'll notice that we have my laptop here instead of the iPad. It's because
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the iPad's dead and we needed to get this show recorded. So don't mind the computer this time.
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If you haven't watched one of these episodes because you've listened to it via podcast,
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this is a YouTube show and you can also watch this just via YouTube. You can listen on iTunes,
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Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, all those things are available. One other point is, again, if you
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haven't left a review, those reviews, guys, are pushing our show out to the masses. We've had so
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many people find our show organically because of how many reviews we have. And so thank you for the
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reviews. You don't even need to write anything. Just go to iTunes and tap the stars. Super simple.
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We've actually been thinking about starting another podcast under ReLearn Church.
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The reality is that we've decided we want to just have one podcast.
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We don't want to have two, Ultimate Marriage and the ReLearn Church podcast.
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We really do believe God's call doesn't ever call us to compromise our family.
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And it's a lot to run Ultimate Marriage and Relearn Church.
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And we wanted to extend the scope of what we're talking about.
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But if you listen to the show, you notice that we talk about the church and the Bible and a variety.
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And we want to talk more about theology and church issues and verse studies,
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cultural things that are facing the church right now and facing marriage and family.
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However, we're going to still talk about marriage and family,
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but we are going to change the name of the podcast.
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and we're going to change it to Real Christianity.
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So you just, you don't need to worry about anything.
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and all the episodes going forward will be found from 31 from 31 on will be found at relearnchurch.org
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so big conversation we've sought some counsel on how to do that and we just made the decision
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that i think that's the best thing because it gives us a wider scope um there's more areas to
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talk about yeah and we're still going to talk about marriage and family a lot totally because
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it's the core of ministry um so we're going to talk about the bible today yeah we're going to
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get into the Bible today. Um, Dale is going to be doing a lot of the teaching today. Um, but I will
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be here to give my two cents and help facilitate some of that conversation. And you're actually
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opening with this and I'm going to open. Okay. So we're talking about the Bible today. What is the
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Bible? The Bible is the record of God's word to mankind. This is like a simple question that a
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lot of people just haven't thought about. Yeah. What is the Bible? Yeah. So super simple, but
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the super simple answer is the record of God's word to mankind. So that being said, how do we
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come to our faith in Jesus Christ? In Romans 10, 17, it says, so then faith comes by hearing
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and hearing by the word of God. Yeah. So there's a huge connection point right there is that
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our faith comes through the word of God through hearing it, by hearing it. And that's what the
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Bible is, is God's word to mankind. And so this is, there's some connection points that we're
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going to make here yeah so what does the bible say about the word of god so in hebrews 4 12 it
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says for the word of god is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword piercing
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even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts
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and intents of the heart this is like one of my favorite scriptures it's so manly it is but you
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should memorize that we should that's not our memory verse for today but it's a good one um
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just to memorize that yeah so when you hear this that scripture and these you know what is the
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bible and how do we come to our faith in jesus christ and what does bible say about the word of
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god um do you feel prepared to defend why you believe that the bible is true uh we have to
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remember that so many people think that it is so weird and it's so strange that we live our lives
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according to this thing that they think is just this ancient book.
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Yeah, like our whole lives are based around this book.
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that we are always to give an answer to just anybody and everyone who asks?
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This scripture, 1 Peter 3.15, that word defense, to give a defense or an answer,
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that's the word we have for apologia in the Greek, apologia, give an answer, defense.
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And this is a great question Veronica has asked.
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Are we just supposed to give an answer to anybody who asks?
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there are two types of questioners and there are honest skeptics people who actually are honestly
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skeptical and they want to know they're curious they want to learn yeah and then there's the
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dishonest skeptic and the dishonest skeptic Matthew 7 6 talks about it Jesus says do not
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give what is holy to the dogs nor cast your pearls before swine lest they trample under their feet
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There are people sometimes who aren't actually curious.
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It's almost asking a question in a way to harass you.
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Yeah, and Jesus does this all the time in the scriptures.
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And he goes, are you asking, or are you asking on behalf of somebody else?
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And so understanding the questioner is critical about this.
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So when somebody says to you, and this is so critical for marriage and family,
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so this is absolutely connected, just for those that are paying attention right now.
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You need to be able to teach your children this stuff.
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For some reason, the church has not done the greatest job on teaching us how to defend our own faith,
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probably because America hasn't really been in a place to defend it for so many decades.
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centuries, but we are now. So when somebody asks you, why do you trust the Bible? Or somebody
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asked me that. Like, why are we banking eternity and our moral compass on this ancient book?
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My first response to these people is usually, why not trust the Bible? You see, a person
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can only really doubt something if that person has something stronger or more solid to believe it.
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And so I go, if you don't trust in the Bible, what do you trust in?
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And most people, you know, usually respond with science or their intuition or, you know,
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whatever historical evidence they have of their own life.
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What they're really doing is they're creating their own paths, their own religion, their
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Next, I ask them, can I tell you why I think you should consider the Bible?
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Like why I actually have so much faith and belief in this book.
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First off, I believe that truth as a category does exist.
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Truth's like unadulterated, pure, 100% truth does exist.
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And we as humans have the ability to evaluate if something is true or false.
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If I'm wearing black shoes, which I am right now, and I say, you know, I make this statement,
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I'm wearing black shoes, and that person looks down at my feet, and indeed I am wearing black
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shoes, that is a true statement. It's a fact. It's a fact. That's a true statement. So
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truth does exist. We do believe that truth exists, which backs up that statement
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Now, we can determine if something is true or false by two ways.
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If something is true, we're going to see confirmations,
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Ultimately, things are lining up if something's true.
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If something is false, we are going to see contradictions,
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clashes, failures, conflicts. Ultimately, things are not lining up, and we do this, again, all the
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time. So with that logic, if you just take that to the Bible, and you actually fully consider it,
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you read it, you actually study it, you see what people are saying about it. It's a book with 66
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books written over a 1,500-year period with about 40 different authors, and it's all telling this
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really cool, unified, miraculous story that leads up to Jesus Christ. And I think it's actually
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more amazing that it wasn't one author, but that it was many authors. It actually works in its
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favor of showing how incredibly miraculous it is that there's a unified theme with 60 different
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books, 1,500 years of space, and 40 different authors. And so if the Bible, again, using that
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structure, contradictions, accuracies, truth, false, using that structure, if the Bible
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made several claims, like one after another, that came back false in history, that came back false
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in philosophy, that came back false in theology, that came back false in archaeology, you could
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see kind of a level of systemic contradiction and failure. And those clashes would give you
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valid reason to believe that the Bible is not true. And that's a pretty, you should be able
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to do that. The problem is that's not the case. The harmony and the accuracy of the Bible is so
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amazing. It's really incredible. Yeah. It's just amazing when you start looking at it and studying
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it. So there's no ancient book that has aligned so accurately with ancient archaeology. Like
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there's archaeologists that are totally atheists that use the Bible as their cornerstone document
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on finding ancient relics. And so it is absolutely like come up over and over and over again. I can
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give you a hundred examples we don't have time um speaking of time time is based off of the bible
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anno domini a.d the year of our lord it's 2019 because of the time of the bible based off of
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that based off of jesus's life um there's no other book that is predicted the future over and over
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again, if you look at the prophecies of Daniel and how they land on top of Alexander the Great
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and just these incredible studies, you can start to see this like prophetic schema, this connection
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point that is just so good that you start to see the supernatural. So there's just so much there
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behind the Bible and you need to be prepared to kind of defend this from so many different angles
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because the word of God is constantly going to be attacked. Yeah, you can talk about the
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unarguable fruitlessness of follow our fruit fullness yeah of following the bible like in
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other words um divorce and adultery or racism and human trafficking um all crime is a result
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of people who have chosen not to follow the bible yeah it's like it's self-evident you follow the
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bible and the world works better totally totally um it is the world's bestseller the bible it's
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the world's best seller. Billy Graham once said a really great quote, quote, quote, quote. He said
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a really great quote. He said it weird too. A really great quote. Um, and it is, it has been
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ridiculed, burned, refuted, destroyed, but it lives on. The Bible is the anvil that has worn out many
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hammers. Yeah. There's, I think that like the numbers are in the billions, maybe a couple
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billion copies of the bible is what what is you know i think it's just an estimated number but
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it is absolutely the world's bestseller far above the quran far above any other holy you know holy
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book um the bible beats them out ultimately uh when you see the miraculous element the harmonies
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the confirmations the accuracies like del was saying um when you see the authenticity this is
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why people can believe that the bible is true yeah there's not like people like there are people at
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oxford and cambridge and some of these incredible institutions universities the smartest people in
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the world that come to the same conclusion the bible is true look up john lennox this guy's like
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one of the smartest people on the planet and and these the bible isn't for dumb people who have
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just like need something to lean on is what a lot of people say no the bible lines up with science
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this is a beautiful, beautiful book. There's a quote that I heard not long ago from an older
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pastor. And he says, even the dust of this book is gold. And so just the idea that the Bible is
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so valuable, it's so incredible. But you can't defend what you fully haven't accepted. And that's
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what we're talking about today. We should have done this as like our first episode, because
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this is so critical for the rest of everything that we've ever said this is a podcast about
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biblical truth this is foundational yeah i i don't open up a study you've seen me how many
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times have i've given this message oh many every time we start a bible study um or host an event
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this is generally the first topic that you'll speak on yeah you need to land the plane here
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if you don't believe that the bible is authoritative if you don't believe that the bible
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is true, um, then nothing else matters. Yeah. We can't have a Bible study or to have a podcast
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about the biblical doctrine. Yeah. Cause there's no foundation to go back to. Yeah. So do you
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believe the Bible is true? Now you might think that's a dumb question. Um, but the current state
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of the church should tell you otherwise it's not a dumb question. No. 50% divorce rate, 68% of men
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are looking at pornography on a regular basis in the church. 78% of the next generation kids
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are leaving the faith by the age of 18? 78%. That's a big deal, guys. Only 11% of Christians
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have read the entire Bible. Less than 5% of Christians have shared the gospel, are sharing
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the gospel with one person per year. Come on, guys. It's a proper question. Do we actually
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believe this thing, or is it just some book that has some good principles that's convenient when
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we need it? You know, and again, now just because you believe it doesn't mean you behave it,
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And that's what a lot of people, oh, yeah, yeah, I believe the Bible's true.
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I want to help you guys land the plane so that you can defend the Bible and glorify God.
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And so every married couple should know how to do this.
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You have to be able to teach your children how to do this.
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so when it comes to the bible the new testament makes a few monumental claims that we need to
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confront and one of them is second timothy 3 16 i'll let veronica read this all scripture is
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breathed out by god and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training in
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righteousness that the man of god may be complete equipped for every good work this is the memory
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verse for today core scripture um when it says that the man of god that word man in the greek
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is anthropos which means mankind human so man or woman um so do you believe that scripture is true
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like do we believe that all scripture is breathed out by god all of it um this is an important
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question you know a lot of people will refute this by saying like well hey you know this is um
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paul is talking about the old testament scriptures he's not talking about the new testament scriptures
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Old Testament scriptures is breathed out by God, but I, you know, I don't know about the New
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Testament. Did Paul really not know that he was writing scripture? I'm going to tell you he
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absolutely did, and I'm going to tell you why. In 2 Peter 3, 14 through 16, it says,
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Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace,
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without spot and blameless, and consider that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation,
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peter looks at paul's writings as scripture the early church views paul's writings and peter's
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writings and james writings and john's writings as scripture first thessalonians paul writes
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first thessalonians 2 13 paul writes this statement he says for this reason we also
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So thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.
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So when he says all scripture is breathed out by God
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and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
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and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete,
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he knows that it's the New Testament canon as well.
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He knows that the words that he's writing are authoritative,
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And when it says that the man of God may be complete,
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do you look at the bible as the means in which you can find completion
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in completion in your understanding completion in your wisdom completion in your marriage
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completion in your parenting completion in your business is the bible where you look
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to complete yourself and the word complete means perfect whole it means nothing needed to be
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Veronica's going to jump back in here in a second. Second scripture
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And this is said a few times in the scriptures.
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statement right here a big claim that we have to ask ourselves if we can believe scriptures
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without flaw because if god can't lie and all scriptures breathed out by god then that means
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scripture must be perfect reliable and without error um and it's funny because a lot of people
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will doubt certain parts of scripture but they won't doubt the gospel like they go oh yeah like
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hey, the gospel, hey, saved by grace through faith. You know, 1 Corinthians chapter 13,
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the love chapter. We love that chapter. But when it comes to this unpopular stuff,
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this uncomfortable stuff over there, yeah, I don't know if that stuff's inspired.
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And I go, so you'll take the gospel from the Bible as if it's perfect and inspired.
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But then a few verses later where it gets tough and uncomfortable and inconvenient,
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you won't take that. That's cherry picking the scriptures. You go a little bit of this,
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a little bit of that. You created your own religion. It has nothing to do with believing
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that all scripture is authoritative. Yeah. Take what they like, leave what they don't.
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Yeah. This is very common in the church today. Take the gospel, leave out the hard stuff.
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It's a buffet approach to scripture. So that's really what we're talking about.
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Yeah. And an even bigger question to ask is, are you willing to believe in Jesus,
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but not Jesus's belief in the authority of scripture? Yes. Because Jesus totally believed
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that the Bible is true yes he believed that the Old Testament was a was historical fact and he
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commissioned the apostles to write the New Testament yeah during Jesus's three-year ministry
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he quotes several different I think like 78 different verses from 16 different Old Testament
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books and those books are Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy 1st Samuel 1st King 2nd
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Chronicles Psalms Isaiah Jonah Micah Hosea Malachi Zechariah and Daniel he calls these references
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the scriptures the word of god and the wisdom of god jesus how crazy it is is it that we're
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going to believe in jesus but not jesus's position on scripture like you can't believe in jesus and
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then not believe like take his position jesus absolutely believed in the authority of scripture
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and even the hard passages like creation um the most references from jesus and his ministry are
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He talks about being in the belly for three days.
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polygamy is descriptive. It recorded that polygamy occurred. The Bible doesn't endorse
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or tell you, prescribe you to be a polygamist. And so you got to learn how to determine those
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things. And we're going to bump into some passages in this podcast that are hard, difficult,
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unpopular, uncomfortable. And if you haven't landed the plane on, if the Bible's true,
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then you're going to struggle through this um and you might have some questions how was the
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bible put together um was it just a bunch of dudes in a room that decided how to put these books
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together no that's the short answer um you can research that on your own time um but but find
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those answers it's actually quite beautiful how the bible was put together and how divinely inspired
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it was, the process, and how it was really the church that put it together and determined
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if it was authoritative, not a group of people.
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But you need to answer these things in your heart, because the heart cannot exalt what
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So if your mind is like stuck somewhere, you struggle with a piece of scripture, your heart
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will never be able to exalt it until your mind can go, yeah, I get it, I believe it,
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And so, do you view this book as an instruction manual of good principles?
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And I'm going to close with a couple things here.
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Is that we can't forget that all God's doctrine is motivated by love.
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um we know this as parents right totally that's not fun sometimes to discipline your child or to
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correct them or to give them instruction but you do it because you love them you do it because you
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love them um his commands in scripture aren't really demands they're really signs of affection
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and we got to look at scripture through that lens and remember as i always say on the show
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that we are the beneficiaries of obedience, not God.
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Like it's our best interest to follow the scriptures.
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and we end up proving that God's laws exist for our benefit.
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when you bump into something in the scriptures that's hard,
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is under the instruction of Jesus Christ and his word.
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every time we move out from under his will and every time we move out from under his ways
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life is going to get harder yes it's going to get more confusing and it's going to get more painful
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i mean just look at any couple that's had a divorce
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if you just followed what the scriptures said it wouldn't have happened
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um and so a quote we say often your marriage has a hundred percent chance of success
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This is a short teaching on like just this idea.
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and so when we bump into these hard things it's like oh i don't want to do that but the word of
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god i promise you it's easier to follow than to not follow um memory verse for this episode
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veronica will read it second timothy 3 16 all scripture is breathed out by god and profitable
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profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of
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God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Guys, you got to memorize that scripture. It's so
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good. It's so important, especially when in times of doubting. So again, this was actually a faster
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show than I thought. Yeah, this was good. Our notes are like really long and I was like, this
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is gonna be a really long show. I don't know if we're gonna have time. Yeah, we went through it
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really quick. So we got a couple more shows coming up. We're going to do a good Q&A probably for the
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next episode. Hit another episode talking about some marriage stuff and then we're going to get
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ready for, again, branding this podcast with the new name, Real Christianity, which is going to
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again, broaden out that topic. You don't need to do a thing. Don't worry about that. If you want to
00:30:39.200
see the notes of this episode, you can just go to ultimatemarriage.com, go to the podcast page.
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This is episode number 28. All the show notes there, the scriptures, all that kind of stuff
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is available for you. And that's it. That's it for the show today. Until next week. Until next
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Wednesday. Thanks for listening to Ultimate Marriage. Take care. Thank you for joining us
00:31:01.040
on this episode of Ultimate Marriage. If you're homesick for a stronger marriage,
00:31:04.560
visit our website at ultimatemarriage.com and consider enrolling in our one-year
00:31:08.500
online marriage mentor program. Also, if you're interested in learning more about building a
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better marriage, follow Veronica and I on social media, where each week we share tips,
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tricks, and lessons on building a biblical marriage.