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[0:00] Great, let me pray for us and then we'll come to our topic for this evening. Let me pray. Father, we want to ask for your help now. We are very conscious, maybe that we are tired, perhaps it's been a long and busy day, but these are important matters and say we pray that you might help us this evening as we consider them together.

[0:18] Please, we pray, may our time together bring you glory, do us good and help us as we live the Christian life, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. If you've not been here before on a Sunday evening, what we tend to do on a Sunday evening, so this is not like a regular Sunday morning sermon, this is more a kind of seminary style, so asking questions is absolutely fine, we're going to have some time for discussion and we want you to interact with what you're learning.

[0:47] The idea being really that if in your Christian life the only input you get is a Sunday morning sermon, you really don't get enough and there is lots of things that we want to think about and talk about together and questions that we want to ask which are important for us to do so together as a church.

[1:03] So, we have been thinking together about some important questions on a Sunday evening that we are asking that the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith is answering for us.

[1:16] So, we're thinking about how the truths expressed in the Confession of Faith, the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, how they answer some of our contemporary questions and how that helps us live the Christian life today.

[1:29] So, I think I've got my copy here. So, you might remember that the 1689 Baptist Confession was one of three confessions written in the 17th century.

[1:44] The first one to be written was called the, we learned this last time, the Westminster Confession. The Westminster Confession was written in 1646 and was approved by Parliament in 1647.

[1:57] Can you imagine such a thing today? The Parliament in Westminster discussing doctrines of the Christian faith and voting on them. The second confession was the Savoy Declaration, which was in 1658.

[2:14] And that differed from the Westminster Confession, not really in doctrine, but in church governance. So, the Savoy Declaration was by a group of congregationalists who said they didn't want to be Presbyterian, but they wanted to be run by their local congregations.

[2:29] And they wrote the Savoy, S-A-V-O-Y, Declaration in 1658. Then there was a short kind of hiatus. The Civil War was happening.

[2:43] Independent churches were persecuted by the government and by the king, especially. And so, after the act of toleration, the Baptist churches were allowed again to publish books and material.

[2:57] And they published the 1689 Confession, which is basically the same as the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration, but now with Baptist church governance written into it and Baptist theology.

[3:12] So, basically, they agree, pretty much. The Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, and the Baptist Confession pretty much agree on the essentials of the Christian faith and differ on church governance. And each of those confessions start with what the Bible says about the Bible.

[3:28] And that's what we've been thinking about these last couple of Sunday evenings. And I want you to think with me about two questions tonight. Number one is, why should we believe that the Bible is the word of God? Right? Why should Christians believe that the Bible is God's word, that it is God speaking as we read the Bible?

[3:46] And the second question is, do we need anything in addition to the Bible or is the Bible sufficient for us? Is the Bible enough? And if the Bible is enough, what is it enough for?

[3:57] And what does that mean and how does that work out in our Christian lives? So, let's start with why believe the Bible is the word of God? Now, this is where I might slightly lose confidence, but I think we're going to do a bit of church history.

[4:13] And I think this is helpful for us and important for us to kind of get a picture of where we're coming from. So, let's go back a little before the confessions were written. And we find Martin Luther in Germany, who led what became the Reformation as the Reformers broke away from the Roman Catholic Church.

[4:33] Not in their imagination teaching anything new or novel, Martin Luther's desire was to reform the church as it was and bring it back to biblical Christianity. One of the great names among the Reformers is a guy called John Calvin, and it is his beautiful picture that you have on your handout there.

[4:57] John Calvin was born in France in 1509, and at the time, France was very firmly a Catholic country. The King of France was pretty close to the Pope, to the extent to which being French was to be Catholic.

[5:13] But Calvin's father wanted him to have a career in the church, and Calvin was bright, right? He was super sharp, and he learned Latin, excelled in philosophy, and was due to go and study theology in Paris as an early teen.

[5:28] Then his father, for reasons we don't really understand, changed his mind and decided that his son, instead of going into the church, should become a lawyer. Calvin submitted to his father and trained for law and learned Greek and the classics and wrote his first book at the age of 22.

[5:47] Then at some point that we're not sure of, but somewhere in the 1530s, Calvin discovered the writings of Martin Luther and became convinced of the doctrine of salvation by grace alone and the need for reformation in the church.

[6:03] Now, that idea was not popular in France at the time. Being labelled a Lutheran in France meant that you were in danger, your life was in danger. So he fled France with his brother and his sister and two friends, and they went to, where you always go when there's trouble, somewhere neutral, Switzerland.

[6:20] So that's where he went. He went to Basel and then eventually to Geneva. In Basel, he wrote his most famous book, which is the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

[6:32] And you can get an English translation. So mine's here. It's in two volumes, but it wasn't as long as this originally. It was a shorter book, and it was designed to be a summary of the doctrines of the Christian faith for the regular man and woman in France who were spiritually hungry and dissatisfied with the church.

[6:54] Now, that book, or that Institutes of the Christian faith, then reflects his understanding of the place of the scriptures in the life of the church.

[7:05] And he writes it in contrast to the teaching that's going around at the time. And I've put what he says on your handout. So this is what he writes. Now, daily oracles are not sent from heaven.

[7:20] For it pleased the Lord to hallow his truth to everlasting remembrance in the scriptures alone. In other words, God is not kind of speaking audibly to everybody every day.

[7:34] In that sense, he is speaking through his words, the scriptures, to hallow his truth, to defend and mark out his truth. Hence, the scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard.

[7:53] This matter is very well worth treating more fully and waiting more carefully. But a most pernicious error widely prevails that scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church, as if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men.

[8:15] Thus, the sacrilegious men wishing to impose an unbridled tyranny under the cover of the church do not care with what absurdities they ensnare themselves and others, provided they can force this one idea upon the simple-minded, that the church has authority in all things.

[8:32] Yet, if this is so, what will happen to miserable consciences seeking firm assurance of eternal life if all the promises of it consist in and depend solely upon the judgment of man?

[8:46] Now, that's confusing, I grant you. But the point is, if you asked somebody in the 16th century in France, why do you believe the Bible's true?

[8:57] They would tell you, because the church tells me the Bible is true. And Calvin says, no, that's nonsense, because if you believe the Bible is true because someone else has told you the Bible is true, what you're really believing is not the Bible, but them.

[9:14] They become your authority, not the Bible. And if really you're just believing people, what are you going to do when it comes to the really weighty matters in life, which is, are you going to go to heaven or are you going to go to hell?

[9:26] Are you safe eternally? Well, really, I don't know. I've only got the words of people. And actually, then you see, you find that all your assurance goes out of the window.

[9:37] And so Calvin's point is, we need to believe the Bible's true because the Bible says the Bible's true. We believe the Bible's the word of God because that's what the Bible is claiming for itself.

[9:49] And we believe it on that ground and that ground alone. Now, that kind of battle between, do you believe the Bible because the church tells you to believe the Bible, or do you believe the Bible because the Bible is the final authority, continues right up until the time that the confessions are written.

[10:03] So the confessions are really asking that question about why I believe the Bible. Does the church give the Bible authority, or does the Bible give the church authority?

[10:14] You could ask it another way. Does the church make the Bible, or does the Bible make the church? That's the question. It's really, really important.

[10:26] Does the church decide what the word of God is, or does the word of God decide what the church is? That's the question at stake. Do we understand that? Does it make sense?

[10:36] Yeah? Now, with that kind of background in mind, come to the 1689 Baptist Confession, and you can see how it answers the question, why believe the Bible. Chapter 1, section 4 and 5 is what we're going to read.

[10:52] Section 4. The authority of the Holy Scriptures obligates belief in them.

[11:05] This authority does not depend on the testimony of any person or church, but on God the author alone, who is truth itself. Therefore, the scriptures are to be received because they are the word of God.

[11:20] The testimony of the church of God may stir and persuade us to adopt a high and reverent respect for the Holy Scriptures. Moreover, the heavenliness of the contents, the power of the system of truth, the majesty of the style, the harmony of all the parts, the central focus on giving all glory to God, the full revelation of the only way of salvation, and many other incomparable qualities and complete perfections, all provide abundant evidence that the scriptures are the word of God.

[11:52] Even so, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority of the Holy Scriptures comes from the internal work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.

[12:13] Now, I know lots of you do very different jobs to me, okay? Okay, John here is a driving instructor, and he sits teaching people how to drive all day, right?

[12:24] Nick works with computers all day. I read this kind of stuff quite a lot, right? So I know that this stuff kind of, oh yeah, that can make sense, but that might not make sense to you.

[12:35] So I want you, with the person next to you, why, according to the confession, I'm not really interested in what you think right now, okay? I am, but not now, right? Why, according to the confession, should you believe the Bible is true?

[12:46] How does that work, okay? Talk to the person next to you, see whether you can come up to an answer to that question. Why, according to the confession, should we believe the Bible is true, and how does that work? Okay, let's try and jump back in.

[13:05] Why, according to the confession, should we believe that the Bible is true? Because God is the author, yeah?

[13:16] God, the author alone, who is truth itself. Now, what would persuade us of believing when the Bible says the Bible is true because it's written by God?

[13:31] What would persuade you of the truth of that? The Holy Spirit, yeah. Ultimately, it's the internal work of the Spirit. There are lots of witnesses to its truth, right?

[13:42] The church is one witness. The heavenly contents is another witness. The power of the system of truth. When you start to get your head around how the Bible all ties together, it's astounding, isn't it?

[13:55] And it's a witness to the fact that there's one author behind the Scriptures, right? The fact that it gives glory to God, the revelation of the way of salvation, the incomparable qualities and complete perfections, all provide abundant evidence that the Scriptures are the Word of God.

[14:10] But, ultimately, it's by the Spirit, through faith, that we believe the Scriptures are the Word of God. That's ultimately why we believe the Bible is the Bible and the Word of God.

[14:22] Okay. Now, before we move on, it's worth just jumping forward a bit in history. If you asked a 16th century Frenchman why they believe the Bible, they would have told you, the church tells me I should.

[14:33] But if you were to ask a 21st century Londoner why believe the Bible, they would probably tell you, no, don't believe the Bible. It's full of lies and errors. So let's just think about that objection for a moment.

[14:44] Actually, as it turns out, that is not a new idea. The idea that the Bible is full of error has been around for quite a long time. Herman Bavinck, writing at the turn of the 20th century, tracks how this works in history for us.

[14:59] He says that basically the reformers sort of held that the Bible's full of lies thing at bay for a bit, but then it comes back in a kind of higher criticism movement.

[15:10] Challenges to the authority of the Bible next surface again in rationalism, deism, and French philosophy. First, in the rationalist 18th century, it tended to be directed against the content of Scripture.

[15:23] Then in the historically minded 19th century, it called in question the authenticity of the biblical writings. Porphyry replaced Celsius. Rian followed Voltaire.

[15:34] Paul of Heidelberg made way for Strauss and Bohr. But the result consistently remained the same. Scripture is considered a book full of errors and lies. How do you respond to that?

[15:45] We believe by faith. Because the Bible tells us that it's God's word. We believe that it's God's word. How do we respond to that? How does the confession answer that? Well, it says, no, we believe the Bible is true by the Spirit.

[15:58] So it doesn't surprise you then that those who don't have the Spirit and who are not Christian believe that the Bible is full of lies and errors because they have a vested interest in undermining the word of God.

[16:12] And we can't then just say, no, we believe the Bible is the word of God because of all these other reasons, because those other reasons become your authority. You can use them as witnesses to the truth of the Bible, but they can't ultimately persuade someone that the Bible is God's word because that's the work of the Spirit in our hearts.

[16:29] That might not surprise you to hear that not everybody thought that was enough, right? Wait a minute. There must be more to it than that. So people then try to go about separating out the Bible, saying, well, maybe the Bible is not all the word of God.

[16:42] Maybe the Bible just contains the word of God, and then there are bits around the word of God in it which maybe aren't quite true. Bavinck continued, as a result, many theologians modified the doctrine of inspiration.

[16:56] The word of God was to be distinguished from Holy Scripture. Only doctrine is immediately inspired. In the rest, error was easily possible.

[17:06] The idea was that, well, basically, the Bible might contain errors, but not in what it really matters, right? That was the defense. A guy called Karl Barth picked this up in the 20th century and taught that the Bible essentially becomes the word of God in the heart of the believer, but the text itself is not God's word, saying, in effect, that the inspiration lies in the reader, not in the text.

[17:29] But what do we make of that? What does the Bible claim for itself in the light of that? Turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16, and we'll just look at this briefly together.

[17:39] 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16. It's on page 1196, if you've got a Bible, from the church.

[17:51] 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16. 1, 1, 9, 6.

[18:03] All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. Notice, Scripture, right?

[18:18] Writings. It is the conviction of the Bible writers that the written word of God is the same in authority as the verbal word of God spoken to the prophets. So they inscripture God's word so that what is written is God-breathed, right?

[18:36] And not just the individual alone who wrote it. It's not all Scripture writers are inspired or breathing out God's word, but the Scriptures themselves.

[18:48] And it's not just some of the writing. It is all of the writing. It's not just the doctrine, not just the bits pertaining to salvation, but all of the writing is breathed out by God.

[18:59] It is God's word carried on his breath, spoken out by him. And, says the confession, either you believe that statement by faith given by the Spirit, or you don't believe it and nothing will persuade you of it, ultimately.

[19:15] Now, discuss again with the person next to you. Your friend, just imagine, you had a friend, has been coming to church with you for a few weeks, but they're not convinced that the Bible is true and think it's full of errors and contradictions.

[19:32] How do you help them? How do you help them? Your friend comes to church, they think the Bible is full of errors and contradictions. How do you help them? You've got a minute to speak to the person next to you, and then we'll get back together.

[19:43] Okay, sorry to interrupt your conversations. Does anyone want to help us out?

[20:07] Sounds like Mike's suggestion is go and play pool. That's the only bit I heard of that, but yeah. Okay, okay, yeah. Anybody want to help us?

[20:19] What might you say to them? I would say, if they should have a parent, do you ask them, have you been read about it, or are you given them some necessary?

[20:31] Right, yeah, so you might want to ask them, where are the errors? Yeah, show me some, and then we can talk about them and engage with them. Yeah, yeah. You said that we'd pray for them, and we're not going to be able to pray.

[20:48] Yeah. We would pray for them, because the Spirit's got to open their eyes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, pray for them, ask that the Spirit would open their eye. Anything else?

[21:02] There are loads of different things you could say, aren't there? From the witnesses, right? In chapter 1.5 of the Baptist Confession, you could turn to some of the witnesses, couldn't you?

[21:15] You could describe the heavenly contents. You could show the power of the system of the truth, so show how it fits together. You could see the central focus on giving glory to God.

[21:27] You could show how it's, you know, here are numerous different authors writing over numerous years, living in different parts of the world under very different systems, writing about the most controversial subject in life, and they are all agreeing with one another, and writing the same.

[21:45] That's incredible, isn't it? You can hardly meet two people who think the same. Never mind meet these people from all these disparate places that are all unified together. But ultimately, they will only believe the Bible is the Word of God by faith.

[22:00] Where does faith come from? Hearing the Word, yeah. Faith comes by hearing. Yeah, so, you say, don't you, you can do all of those things, and then you say, just keep listening, right?

[22:14] Keep reading. Keep coming along to church. Keep asking your questions. Why don't we have a look at Mark's Gospel together or something? Why don't we read a bit together, and you can tell me what you think?

[22:25] Because actually, that's how this works, isn't it? It's by faith. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you, when, because the message of the cross is foolishness.

[22:51] Yeah, I, Clifford, you, you've got to hold those things together, haven't you? Right? Right? That faith comes by hearing, but it, it doesn't come automatically at all the time, does it?

[23:03] So there are people who hear the Word of God and who reject it. The parable of the sower is, is a reflection of what goes on, isn't it, in people's hearts. So we keep sharing God's Word and we keep praying and asking God to be at work, recognizing that that will not automatically bring faith to everybody who hears.

[23:20] Yeah. Yeah. I think I want you to feel, from the stuff that we're looking at about what, I just want to feel a sense of liberty, right? Your job is not to defend the Bible.

[23:34] The Bible is more than able to do that for you. You, you just need to encourage people to look at it and read it and ask the Lord to do his work in their hearts. And, and the questions that people are asking and the statements they are making have been made for centuries and centuries and have never thwarted the progress of the gospel as the church has continued to preach the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting in his Word.

[24:02] The Bible has continued to make the church. Praise God. Okay. We're going to crunch through the gearbox and go into a second question, which is slightly disconnected, but it is the next point in the Baptist Confession of 1689.

[24:16] And I want us just to think about, do we need anything in addition to the Bible? And this is point six. And I'm going to read it in two chunks. So we're going to do the first part first and then the second part, and it's going to be quite quick and you can ask questions at the end.

[24:30] Okay. The whole counsel of God concerning everything essential for his own glory and man's salvation, faith, and life is either explicitly stated or by necessary inference contained in the Holy Scriptures.

[24:47] Nothing is ever to be added to the Scriptures, either by new revelation of the Spirit or by human traditions. Now, it might be just worth explaining a couple of sentences in there.

[24:59] The whole counsel of God concerning everything essential for salvation. The whole counsel of God is all of the Bible, right? Everything essential for his own glory, God's glory and man's salvation, faith, and life is either explicitly.

[25:11] That means you can read it in there because it's directly talked about or is talked about by good and necessary consequence or by necessary inference, as our modern translation puts it here.

[25:22] That means that something is true because it's an implication of the Bible. So just because this idea has come to my mind, you might say that the Bible doesn't say anything about the internet, right?

[25:37] Because obviously the Bible is written before the internet. But that doesn't mean that you can't say true things for the Christian about how they use the internet by good and necessary inference from the Bible, right?

[25:49] So all those things that we read in Galatians chapter 5 about how we are and aren't to behave apply to things that weren't imagined by the Bible in the Bible writer's time. That's inference, right?

[26:01] But the confession here is essentially saying that the Bible is a complete book, yeah? It's a finished book, that no one is currently writing the Bible. No one is being given revelation to complete the Bible.

[26:14] Specifically in their context, the Roman Catholic Church are not adding the Bible tradition and the scriptures don't go alongside one another. The Bible always goes ahead, right? And so why is that the case?

[26:27] Well, because the coming of God the Son in human flesh is the completion of the scriptures. And there's a sense in which God turns up in person and therefore has nothing more to say.

[26:38] He has fully revealed himself and the witness to the person of Jesus Christ and the works of Jesus Christ by the eyewitnesses complete the written word of God. So when you read through the Bible, Paul doesn't tell Timothy to lock himself in a room and wait for a revelation.

[26:53] He tells him what? Preach the word. Read God's word. Publicly. Notice how this works, though. The confession is clear to say that the Bible is sufficient for the purpose for which it's given.

[27:06] So the Bible is not everything that you would ever want to know about God. You know, you can read the whole Bible and understand it better than anybody else has in human history and still have questions.

[27:17] Because it's not everything you want to know, but it's not even everything you could know, but it's everything you need to know about God in order to be saved and live a life for his glory. Now, the point is not that God couldn't speak to you about something else.

[27:33] It's not that God couldn't give you a particular impression that you should do something or go in a particular direction in your life. I would say I had a really strong impression that God was calling us to come to West Kilwam Baptist Church.

[27:44] But it's important to say that that is in a very different category to the Bible, right? None of that is necessary for salvation or even for holiness. That's just God's kindness. How does this work out in practice?

[27:56] Well, the next part of the statement. Let's read on. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the inward illumination of the Spirit of God is necessary for a saving understanding of what is revealed in the Word.

[28:11] We recognize that some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the church are common to human actions and organizations and are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian wisdom following the general rules of the Word, which must be observed.

[28:28] This is brilliant. You get this, right? And I know it's the last thing we're doing, but please try and hold on for this. Okay. Notice here that the point is that the Bible is sufficient for salvation and holiness, but there is lots of other things that would be really helpful for you to know, right?

[28:42] That aren't in the Bible and which might be helpful, especially it seems for church life. So some things about church government and worship are common to human actions and organizations, he says, right?

[28:55] Or they say. And so, in other words, you might not be able to open the Bible and find out how you should run the Crest Rater, right? You might not be able to open the Bible and work out how you should run the charitable status of a church or a staff team or a small organization.

[29:13] There might be some really useful things on gov.uk, right? But the point is that the Bible is sufficient but not exhaustive. It's all we need to know for salvation by the inward illumination of the Spirit, as we've seen before.

[29:26] But there is stuff that we could know and could learn outside of the Bible, which will help us organize not only our own lives, but also organize the church life. Because we are human and we live in this world and we can learn for one another.

[29:41] This is really helpful for serious Bible churches like ours, right? Because Bible churches can get really bent out of shape by suggesting that they only want to do and restrict their practice to what the Bible expressly says.

[29:54] You know, we're not going to have a church administrator. We're not going to have a senior pastor. We're not going to have a band. We're not going to project words onto the screen because the Bible doesn't tell us that we should do those things. And the confession says, almost don't be over-spiritual about that because actually there are stuff that you could learn about how to organize your life together as a church, which is, you know, how does he put it in that last part of the statement?

[30:19] Which, following the general rules of the word, which must always be observed. So not in contradiction to scripture, but in accordance with scripture that will help us with wisdom to lead the church and lead the church forward.

[30:32] So do we need more than the message of the Bible? Well, no, we don't. Not to be saved, not to live a godly life. Might there be other things that would be helpful for us to know? Yes, there might be. Should we learn them?

[30:44] Yes. Will that be good for our church family? Almost certainly it will be. Now, what does the sufficiency of the scriptures mean for us personally then?

[30:54] Well, this is my last statement. My old pastor in Sheffield used to put it like this. It means if something is really, really important to you and you cannot find it in the Bible, either you don't know your Bible well enough or it shouldn't be that important to you.

[31:12] Right. And that's it, isn't it? The Bible is everything that you need to know for life and for godliness. It's not everything you can know and there's wisdom out there that would be useful for you to learn. But if something that is really, really important to you and you don't find it in the Bible, you don't know your Bible well enough or it's not really that important.

[31:30] That's the sufficiency of the scriptures. Any questions or comments as we finish? We'll look a bit spaced.

[31:49] There's one thing that we've asked before we finish. Yeah? It's just, I guess you're doing, it's handy to have something that might explain historical and cultural politics, especially the Old Testament.

[32:02] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of like, a lot of things, the Bible has changed our perception of over a few years. Mm-hmm. And so it's helpful having some sort of guide next to it that's one that's playing as well.

[32:19] So you're doing like 2,000 years ago. Yeah. Why certain things were happening that might seem very alien and weird to this now. Yeah. Yeah. So, because the Bible is also a historical document.

[32:29] And, yeah, there's a lot of things there that just seem like strange. Yes. That really just come through. Yes. And it's, so it's nice to have things on either side that kind of can be coded first.

[32:42] Yes. So I would want to be careful about that. So it's good to have stuff that teaches the history. So absolutely, yes. The Bible is a historical book, so we need stuff that will help us with the historical context.

[32:56] Is it essential for you to have that in order to understand enough of the Bible to be saved? Definitely not, because the Bible alone is sufficient. If it was essential for us to be saved, it would have been included in the Bible.

[33:08] Is it helpful for us to know to make sure that we understand the Bible properly? Yes. Is that in God's providence? Yes. Will having that ensure that you have a saving knowledge of Jesus in the Bible?

[33:19] No, because that's only by the work of the Spirit, isn't it? Does that make sense? So I'm agreeing with what you're saying with those kind of qualified. Yeah. Amy, you had a question as well.

[33:30] Yeah. So I am a Catholic. Mm-hmm. So he's about to be a cop-spot-perm by a lot. Yes. He's studying theology, so he is talking about, like, the church.

[33:44] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[33:56] Yeah. Yeah. So we, we skipped over chapter 1.2, I think it is, in the confession, which lists the book of the Bible.

[34:07] So the Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, and the Baptist Confession all put the 66 books in the Bible without the Apocrypha and state that they don't believe the Apocrypha to be part of the Word of God.

[34:17] And I think, probably, there is a range of opinions of Roman Catholic individuals and of the church about how exactly they handle that. How and why the church decided the canon as it did is a slightly longer question, which I'm not going to answer now.

[34:34] But it's important to say, I think, that it is not that the church gave a status to those 66 books that they didn't have, but rather the church is recognizing the status that those 66 books have in the life of the church and are then drawing a boundary around them.

[34:52] And so I think you can look back in church history, this would be my short answer, you look back in church history and see that the books of the Apocrypha have only ever been treated as less than those 66 books.

[35:03] And so that some of the contents might be helpful and useful. And it says, I think the Confession states it's something like, the books of the Apocrypha are useful information as are other books, a bit like what Nick's saying about other historical books, but are not part of the Word of God.

[35:20] And I think you can have pretty complete lists of the New Testament and Old Testament by very, very early church history. Any other questions?

[35:33] My one asks, what was the crack here used to determine which was Scripture and which was? Yeah, so apostolic witness and authority is the key one, isn't it?

[35:49] So written by the apostles or written on the instruction of the apostles. Yeah. We could talk about that some more and it's slightly more complicated because even like Luther, he, I mean, he didn't want the Apocrypha in the Bible, but he didn't want a few of the other books in the Bible either.

[36:07] So we could talk about that at another stage. But I would need to just make sure I knew exactly what was right before I said it and Nick puts it up on YouTube and I get corrected.

[36:20] Let me pray for us and we'll finish there. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the liberty of knowing that you have spoken clearly in your Word and that by your Spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ, we now get to hear you speak to us every day when we open a Bible and together as church as we open God's Word together.

[36:48] What a joy that you, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, would speak to people like us clearly that we might know you, love you, live our lives to your praise and your glory.

[37:00] We want to ask, Lord, that we would be eager to listen. As eager as you are to speak, would we be eager to listen, we pray. And we ask, Lord, that you might help us as a church and as individuals not to feel like we have to defend you.

[37:16] You're well able to do that for yourself. And we pray, please, that we would just get your Word out there, that people might read and hear the wonderful news of Jesus our Saviour as we pray in his name.

[37:28]  Amen. Amen.