“We believe that this Holy Scripture contains the will of God completely and that everything one must believe to be saved is sufficiently taught in it. For since the entire manner of service which God requires of us is described in it at great length, no one—even an apostle or an angel from heaven, as Paul says—ought to teach other than what the Holy Scriptures have already taught us.
For since it is forbidden to add to the Word of God, or take anything away from it, it is plainly demonstrated that the teaching is perfect and complete in all respects. Therefore, we must not consider human writings—no matter how holy their authors may have been—equal to the divine writings; nor may we put custom, nor the majority, nor age, nor the passage of times or persons, nor councils, decrees, or official decisions above the truth of God, for truth is above everything else.
For all human beings are liars by nature and more vain than vanity itself. Therefore we reject with all our hearts everything that does not agree with this infallible rule, as we are taught to do by the apostles when they say, “Test the spirits to see whether they are from God,” and also, “Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching.””
What’s the word of God good for? Can it give you a happy marriage? Consider Sean and Olivia. They are in their late twenties and loving every minute of it. They see no need for God. They love their friends. They love partying. They’ve got a busy life filled with what they want. A friend from work invites Olivia to a Bible study. Olivia thinks Christians are weird, but she really likes this friend who invited her. God uses that Bible study to bring Olivia to faith in Christ. Olivia starts to change. Sean doesn’t like the changes he sees in his wife. He wants to drink. He wants her to go out drinking with him. He wants them to do all the stuff they used to do and to do it together. Olivia doesn’t. Sean and Olivia used to get along quite well. They don’t anymore. They have much more conflict in their marriage than they did before. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth,” said Jesus. “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
What about having a successful business? Will following God’s word give you success in business? Sometimes, but consider the Christians who received James’ letter. After they came to Christ, the Jews made a concerted effort to bankrupt them by avoiding their businesses. They succeeded. That happens in today’s cancel culture too. Obeying God’s word might cost you your business.
So, what is the word of God good for? Well, it’s good for knowing Him and knowing His will. That’s what it does. God’s word isn’t good for what it’s not intended for just like a waffle iron isn’t good for making smoothies or ironing pants. Reading God’s word will teach you that He isn’t too interested in us having perfect families. He is very interested in us trusting Him with our imperfect families and obeying Him in them. He isn’t that interested in us succeeding wildly in business. He is very interested in us learning to trust Him at work and obey Him at work. God’s word is very good at that. It’s perfect at it and that’s what we need it for. The Bible is sufficient for knowing God and His will. Nothing more is needed and nothing more can be added. That’s what it is about and that’s the claim of this sermon: the Bible is sufficient for knowing God and His will. Nothing more is needed and nothing more can be added.
We will study this in three points. First: everything sufficiently taught. Second: the primacy of God’s word. Third: the infallible rule.
First: everything sufficiently taught. You can’t add to Scripture. I don’t simply mean that it would be frowned upon. I mean that any attempt to add to Scripture would only detract from it. No sermon that you have ever heard has ever added anything to what was already in your hands in this book. The good ones only explain and apply what is in already in this book.
So, adding to God’s word would leave you with less. Subtracting from God’s word would leave you with less. Exodus, which we will start next week, adds something that no other book adds. You would know God less fully without it. He wants you to know His will. Every part of it matters for you seeing God rightly just like every part of your eyeball matters for you seeing rightly.
The Bible is perfectly suited for its task of revealing God and His will; Article 7, “We believe that this Holy Scripture contains the will of God completely and that everything one must believe to be saved is sufficiently taught in it.”
When he wrote those words Guido deBres was thinking about the magisterium. The magisterium is the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to declare what Scripture means and does not mean. This assumes that Scripture is insufficient to explain itself. It requires the church’s explanation. The Roman Catholic Church would also say the tradition of the church is necessary for knowing God and His will. So, the Reformers—and hence the Belgic Confession—said that Scripture alone is sufficient for knowing God and His will while the Roman Catholic Church said and says that you need church tradition and the Scripture as understood by the magisterium to know God and His will. Now if we had a priest here, we could talk more about these differences, but that’s the basics.
This church would say—and I can say that not because I’m the pastor but because this is a confessional church that subscribes to the Belgic Confession—that the Bible is sufficient to reveal God and His will without any help from us because, as Article 7 puts it, “the entire manner of service which God requires of us is described in it at great length.”
God bends over backwards throughout all of Scripture to reveal Himself and His will. We know that God is holy because He has made that clear in texts like Exodus 20 and Isaiah 6. We know that God expects trust because He has made it clear in texts like Genesis 3 and Psalm 23.
The Bible doesn’t mumble. This is what is called the perspicuity of Scripture in case you find theological terms helpful. Moses’ assumed this when shortly before his death, he told the people, ‘this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.’
Jesus assumed the clarity of Scripture. That why he said statements like, “Have you not read what David did . . . ?” Or, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” “The blame for failing to understand [the Scriptures]” as Wayne Grudem put it, “is always on the reader, never on the Scriptures themselves.”
So, the Scriptures are sufficient for knowing God and His will. That—and not the secret of getting your sister to get along with you—is the good of Scripture. What God wants is for you to learn to trust Him in what’s going on between you and your sister. He wants you to learn to obey Him when you deal with your sister. That’s what the word will teach you—not how to make her get along with you. God uses His word to change you so that instead of merely wanting your sister to get along with you, you come to want to trust and obey God as you deal with your sister and it tells you how to do that.
In other words, God does soul surgery on you through this word so that you learn to want what He has to offer, which is actually what you need. As Hebrews puts it, “the word of God is living and active, shaper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”
If you want to know Him to whom you must give account, Scripture is sufficient. If you want to know what He expects, Scripture is sufficient. That’s why it has primacy. That’s our second point: the primacy of God’s word. The word of God must be given mastery in our hearts, in our homes, and in this church because it is the means by which God does this soul surgery. This means that everything else—particularly everything listed in the second paragraph of Article 7—must be judged by Scripture.
Religious talk needs to be judged by Scripture. That’s the first one listed in Article 7, “we must not consider human writings—no matter how holy their authors may have been—equal to the divine writings.” Don’t believe what I say simply because I say it. Ask yourself whether it matches the word of God. You are to be like the Bereans in Acts 17 in this regard, “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” The question isn’t whether you like them. The question is whether they say what the Bible says.
That’s true about your favorite devotional writer. That’s true for our religious tradition. Don’t be more devoted to Calvin—or Calvinism—than you are to the Bible. Calvin was less devoted to himself and to Calvinism than he was to the Bible. I say that as a five point Calvinist.
So don’t put people’s thoughts on God on par with Scripture. Don’t put custom, which is the next in Article 7’s list, on par with Scripture. Just because we’ve done it one way doesn’t mean God has a vested interested in us continuing to do it that way. Think about musical instruments in worship. Just because there were no drums in worship fifty years ago is no reason to keep them out of worship. It’s easy to go wrong in this way. [I have removed the quotation from Luther about the organ. It seems that Luther’s view on instrumentation in worship is a rather complex matter. I could have used Calvin’s reticence about instrumentation in worship but it was already recorded so here we are with this ammendation]
The majority doesn’t determine what’s right or wrong—that’s next in Article 7. Statistically speaking this congregation would be foolish to maintain our position that homosexual behavior is morally wrong. We find ourselves in a definite minority on that issue, but that doesn’t matter because, as the Belgic explains, we must not put the majority over Scripture. Public polls don’t reveal ethics. God’s word does.
The passage of time is not to be placed above the word of God. Any truth from God’s word that can believed at 9:05 AM can be believed at 9:05 PM. Any truth from God’s word that could be believed in 1952 can be believed in 2022. The times have changed. Yes, they have, but that didn’t make racism right in 1952 or abortion right in 2022 and it doesn’t make racism right today or abortion right then.
The passage of persons doesn’t change the validity of the word of God to keep working through Article 7. Joash was seven years old when he became king of Judah. If you are reading through the Old Testament, you read about him a few weeks ago. Joash was mentored by Jehoiadia, the priest, and king Joash followed the Lord as long as Jehoiadia lived. Once Jehoiadia died, however, Joash turned away from following the Lord. When Jehoiadia’s son confronted Josah on it, Joash had him killed. Godly influences pass away. Generations pass away. The question for this church, and every church, is whether we are kept in check by God’s word or, like Joash, are kept in check by mere human influence.
To finish up the list from Article 7, neither councils nor decrees nor official decisions carry the authority of God’s word. The fact that a church somewhere in Sioux Falls or here in Inwood is doing something doesn’t make it right or wrong. The fact that we are doing something doesn’t make it right or wrong. The question is always what does Scripture call us to do? We are to continue to reform ourselves by this word. That’s what it means to be re-formed—formed again and again and again by God’s word. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” It is the standard. That’s the standard because it is the infallible rule. That’s our final point: the infallible rule.
We needs this infallible rule because we make fallible rules. We are quick to change the measuring stick so we measure up. Little kids are quick to massage the rules of a game to make it go their way. Adults are no different. God knows how quick we are to change the rules to justify ourselves. He knows how quick we are to look for loopholes to avoid doing what we don’t want to do. He considers that so prevalent among us that when He wanted to describe Himself through Balaam, He said, “God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change his mind.”
We try to bend this infallible rule to suit ourselves. That’s Genesis 3—“did God really say?” The rule can’t be changed. We must change ourselves to suit it. This is why Calvin said, “it is not for us to invent to us what seems good, or to follow what may have even devised in the brains of other men, but to confine ourselves simply to the purity of Scripture.” This is why Article 7 says, “all human beings are liars by nature and more vain than vanity itself. Therefore, we reject with all our hearts everything that does not agree with this infallible rule…”
The story of God’s people has always included this strange desire for some sort of rule other than God’s word—something more open minded, something more relatable, something more binding on others to get them to do what we want them to do—to cut through the niceties—more natural to our flesh. That’s how it was in Moses’ day, which is why he said, “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you.” That’s how it was in Paul’s day, which is why he told Timothy, “the time will come when people will not listen to the true teaching but will find many more teachers who please them by saying the things they want to hear.”
Itching ears don’t want to know God and His will. That was true in the wilderness. That was true in the first century. That’s true in the twenty-first century. Itching ears want what they want—maybe it’s health, maybe it’s wealth, maybe it’s popularity, maybe it’s just something to catch their interest for a bit as they sit in church. Itching ears assess what they hear based on whether or not it is helpful for what they most want—the perfect marriage, success in business, their kids to listen, their in-laws to wake up. The alternative to itching ears is to have ears which want to hear about God and His will. That’s something we pray for regularly in this sanctuary. That’s something to pray for when you open your Bible. That’s what, “open my eyes that I might see wonderful things in Your word,” is all about.
This book tells churches exactly what sort of preacher to welcome. “Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching,” as Article 7 puts it. People need to know God. They need to know His will. That’s what the church has to offer. Don’t look for less than the infallible rule.
We need to keep offering this whether people want it or not. We must, to use the words of Paul, offer it in season and out of season. Offering seven sure fire tips for a successful business from God’s word will always create more interest than offering knowledge of God and His will. Promising people that your teaching will give them a new child or new spouse by Saturday will always attract more interest than promising them that your teaching will help them know God and His will better by Saturday.
The seven sure fire tips are more popular, but they don’t deliver. They don’t deliver because God doesn’t promise success in business. He doesn’t promise you the child or spouse you want. He promises that You can know Him and His will, that you can trust Him in your life as it is right now—business and spouse and all—and obey Him moving forward in your life. He promises that this will lead you to something far better than you can plan. In other words, “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”
That’s the infallible rule. That’s what we have to offer. That’s what we need to offer even though left to ourselves we want something different. That’s what Article 7 is all about. Left to themselves children would buy only pixie sticks, pop, and pizza for groceries. Left to ourselves we would surround ourselves with teachers who please us by saying the things we want to hear. This article reminds us that we must not leave ourselves to ourselves. I must not leave myself to myself. I must submit myself to knowing God. I must submit myself to knowing His will. That’s what I need. That’s what you need. That’s what we all need. That’s what the world needs, and this word from God is good for that. Amen.