Introduction

After coming off of the Bahnsen Conference on the cohesive and comprehensive worldview of Dr. Greg Bahnsen, I thought I would preach a sermon on why it is important to live by every word of the Bible. Even the ceremonial laws that have passed away help us to live out the Gospel and also provide us with many principles related to mathematics, geometry, and other subjects. Very literally, we can (and are commanded to) live by every Word of God found in the Bible. I preached on this passage twelve years ago, but the Lord has laid on my heart some additional thoughts that directly relate to applying yesterday's Conference in practical, tangible ways. And I thought I would start by giving some stories that show why this is so important.

People tend to live up to the height of their vision. If they are not convinced that nations will once again rule by God's law, they may not be motivated to study what the Bible says about politics. We tend to be practical creatures, and - hey -if the Bible's political passages will never-ever be implemented on planet earth, we might think, "Why bother? We've got other Biblical fish to fry that are higher priority. After all, we've got limited time!" So a pessimistic eschatology can limit your vision. If you are not convinced that the Bible speaks to science, you won't tend to notice what it says to that subject because you won't be looking for it to speak to that subject. So our vision does tend to drive how we read the Bible.

My father and mother (that are pictured in your outlines) were pioneer missionaries in Ethiopia. But unlike some missionaries, they both had a pretty big vision of how the Bible transforms a culture. And they saw the incredibly abusive treatment of women completely transformed because they believed the Bible called for it. They saw health practices change because their vision of what God expects for the stewardship of our bodies called for it. My father's teaching of the first elders in the church was patterned after the methodology of Christ and the apostles. Instead of centralization of education (that most missionaries had), he taught these future elders in such a way that they would be able to teach others, who in turn would teach others, so that the solid training process spread exponentially. And the results were remarkable. When I was a child, there were just a handful of churches in the Kambata province, but now, 60 years later, over 95% of that area is solidly Christian, and over 90% of the neighboring area is the same. Some of you met Desta Langena who is training Ethiopians to send missionaries to other countries.

Of course, not even my father anticipated such phenomenal growth, which means that those two areas now need to think through many questions they had not even considered before – questions on city planning, Biblical jurisprudence, what are the Biblical limits of civil government, and how should a civil court function? If you were a missionary, could you give answers to those questions from the Bible alone? Could you answer their questions on why female circumcision is wrong (absolutely wrong), or why it is wrong to pull the uvula out of the back of children's throats - which happened all the time. In some tribes they routinely did those kinds of things. My father tried to change those practices, but many missionaries didn't want to oppose female clitorectomies (which also was common), or removing the uvula, or female circumcision (the scarring of which made child birth incredibly dangerous). Many missionaries thought that those things were just a cultural issues that should be left alone. But my dad wisely taught that all of these things were Biblical issues. But could you teach them why that is the case?

I talked with the chief of a village of Dalits in India, and he begged me for teaching on how to rule a village from a Biblical viewpoint. He said that almost his entire village was now Christian, but he had never been taught how to replace Hindu concepts of ruling with Biblical concepts. Western missionaries weren't any help whatsoever because they were only focused on church issues. I was the first one he had met that was giving him practical answers to the economic, business, and civil questions that he had. Missionaries were not used to living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

I talked with a brilliant Indian by the name of Vishal Mangalwadi, and he said that he got converted to Christianity by trying to figure out why the West had been so blessed in technology, art, music, science, liberty, education, and so many other areas. And he discovered that it was the Bible that had been the foundation for virtually everything he admired in the West. And what shocked him is that the West has been abandoning the Bible as the foundation for life. When he came to the West, he was saddened that Christians hardly apply the Bible to anything anymore. He was shocked to find pastors who didn't think that the Bible even speaks to music, science, or other disciplines. And he predicts that we are going to lose the amazing fruits of Western civilization if we do not get back to the roots of the Bible. But when he has talked to church leaders in America about it, for the most part they were not that interested. He said that the sun was setting on the West because we are no longer living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. His book, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization¹ is a must read. It is a call to return to the old paths. A couple of his other books are Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations,² and This Book Changed Everything: The Bible’s Amazing Impact on Our World.³ If you want reading, I've given a picture of him and his website, revelationmovement.com in your outlines. His books provide some rather exciting reading.

And as we go through this passage, I hope to convince you that we are still in the infancy of applying the Bible to economics, administration, advertising, hiring principles, sales principles, leadership principles, and many other subjects. Let's read verse 4 in context of the first three verses again:

Matt. 4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Matt. 4:2 And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.

Matt. 4:3 Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread."

Matt. 4:4 But He answered and said, "It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.' "

Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 8

Since Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 8, let me give you a little bit of background before we dig into this passage. The connection between the two passages is very strong. Christ's forty days of being tested in the wilderness immediately prior to this chapter connects strongly with the forty years of testing in the wilderness that Israel went through prior to Deuteronomy 8. Both passages deal with a nation that had not learned how to trust God and both passages deal with a leader who was pointing people's eyes to God's Word after a period of fasting. Both passages call us to faith, prayer, dependence upon God, humility before God, and other issues that we won't have time to get into. Both passages deal with how easy it is for Satan to suck us away from dependence upon God to independent thinking. And both passages deal with the fact that the Bible has been provided to guide our thinking on every facet of life. So we need to interpret this verse in light of Deuteronomy 8. Jesus was not doing eisegesis. He was not doing bad proof-texting. He was being a faithful applier of the Word of God.

What He was not saying

Jesus is not ignoring the need for bread.

The second thing that I want to do before we dig into the passage is to show four things that Jesus was not saying in Matthew 4. Jesus was not saying that we can ignore the need for bread. Those of you who like bread will be happy to hear that. The word "alone" implies the exact opposite. "Man shall not live by bread alone" implies that we do need to live by bread. And when God had Israel fast prior to Deuteronomy 8, He was not denying that they needed bread. He promised to provide bread. What He was doing was testing whether they would have absolute dependence upon Him in every area of life – including eating and drinking. He commanded Israel to seek bread – in His time and in His way. Deuteronomy 8 makes it clear that even on the issue of eating, we must conform to Scripture. And Jesus was making the same point.

Jesus is not saying that we don't need to make a living.

Secondly, Jesus is not saying that we don't need to make a living. The word "alone" modifies both bread and live. Man needs to make a living. And certainly the context of Deuteronomy 8 mandated that Israel work hard to make a living. Jesus spent the first 30 years of His life in a trade – carpentry. Why spend most of His life earning a living in carpentry if it was not God's intention to elevate the importance of physical work? But even physical work is totally subject to God's will as expressed in Holy Scripture. There is no secular/sacred divide. Perhaps you remember Jesus' words to his parents when he was twelve years old. He said, "I must be about My Father's business." He continued with his job of carpentry, which implies that carpentry was being about His Father's business. He later said that He did not do anything apart from the will of God, and this means that He engaged all of life in light of the Scriptures. When I first became Reformed up in Canada, a shop teacher showed me his paper on a Biblical philosophy of carpentry. I have been hunting high and low for it, and can't find it. But I remember that it was a wonderful paper. The Bible says a lot about carpentry and other trades. Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do we must do all to the glory of God. And the only way we know how to glorify God is through His Word. So Jesus was not saying that we don't need to make a living. We do. In fact, Scripture says, "If a man work not, neither shall he eat."

Jesus did not say that God is careless about our life – fasting was a reminder of their total dependence upon Him

Thirdly, Jesus was not saying that God was uncaring about our life. On the contrary, Deuteronomy 8 shows that God cared very much, even though Satan was tempting them to think that God didn't care. If Israel would have reminded themselves of the promises in God's Word, they would have known that God did care about every aspect of their life. The short period of fasting was simply a test of their faith, even as it tested Christ's faith.

Jesus was not calling for life in a monastery – He had called mankind to dominion. But all dominion must be founded upon the Word of God

Fourth, Jesus was not calling for escape from life into a monastery, as some have taken it. The context of Deuteronomy 8 actually reiterates the Dominion Mandate. But unlike Adam's attempt to take dominion independently of God's will, our attempts must be firmly grounded in God's Word, and God's word does indeed speak to issues like stones and bread and making a living and every area of our dominion. So let's take this verse apart word by word and see what it does mean. It really is a paradigm for our lives that reinforces what we were hearing in the Bahnsen Institute Apologetics conference.

This is a paradigm for our lives

Jesus contradicted independent thinking ("But")

The first word is "But," and that immediately indicates that Jesus was contradicting the devil. He was engaging in antithesis. That doesn't seem very polite in our pluralistic society. But it is absolutely imperative if we are to see long-term change. I have met many liberals over my lifetime who were quite willing for you to tell the truth. Their attitude was, "Hey, if you want to believe that, that's fine. That is true and good for you and this is true and good for me." But they get irate the moment you say, "But, what you are holding to is blatantly false." It's that "but" that gives antithesis. And it's the antithesis that gives power to penetrate culture and change culture.

Years ago Francis Schaeffer was warning the evangelical church that they would lose the culture battles unless they started maintaining antithesis.⁴ Antithesis is a sharp distinction between truth and falsehood, between A and non-A, right and wrong, light and darkness. We have lost the battle because postmodern thinking has infected the church. Postmodernism rejects antithesis as being impolite. Schaeffer pointed out that you have not fully defended the truth if you only state what is true. Does that surprise you? I think he was right. He said that you have not fully defended the truth if you only state what is true. You must also deny the truth of the opposite. You must actively oppose falsehood. That's not politically correct. Anyway, Francis Schaeffer said, "To the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism."⁵ That, my friends, is an indictment of almost the entire evangelical church of today. They need to hear that message. Let me read that quote again. Francis Schaeffer said, "To the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism." The modern church wants nice conversation, not debate. They want opinions to be freely stated, but no opinion to be called false. The word heresy has ironically become heresy. Church discipline is castigated. Intolerance is ironically no longer tolerated.

They are thinking like post-modernist pagans. I own a book that beautifully and powerfully resists this impulse by having a denial for every affirmation that is made to maintain this antithesis. It is edited by Jay Grimstead (a friend of mine). It is a compilation of documents from hundreds of scholars called Rebuilding Civilization on the Bible: Proclaiming the Truth on 24 Controversial Issues.⁶ The affirmations tell the truth from Scripture and the denials deny the truth of the opposite. And those denials are critical. They keep closet liberals from being able to sign the documents: there's no wiggle room. It keeps cowardly evangelicals from pretending to be Reformers when they are not. But above all, it makes it clear what we believe and what we do not believe. We affirm this, and we deny the opposite. And such clear thinking is absolutely essential if we are to live in a way that is pleasing to God. Make sure your theology includes a "but" in its thinking.

Jesus had an answer

The second thing to notice is that Jesus had an answer for every one of Satan's temptations. Verse 4 says, "But He answered and said…" He had an answer. And it is critical that the church learn to find answers from God's Word. Can you give Biblical guidance to your daughter on whether makeup is Biblical, and if so, to be able to give specific guidance on how to make it appropriate and where the focus and accent should be? I've got a little booklet called Aids to Beautification that might give you a start. If you want, you can ask Daniel to print you a copy. It's not on the Biblical Blueprints website. But it's barely an introduction to what the whole Bible says about the subject. What about a philosophy of modesty? Our families need to think through these things.⁷

Can you help your son to stop his poor purchasing choices by teaching him the 26 principles of resistance to salesmen techniques that are illustrated in Genesis chapter 3?⁸ Maybe you didn't even know that in that chapter Satan used the same sales techniques that are taught in modern sales training (and in my early years I've been through that sales training with several companies). But more importantly, that chapter shows you how to develop resistance to such sales techniques. My point in bringing up these illustrations is that the Bible must not be seen simply as a reference book that we occasionally open up out of curiosity about as often as we do a dictionary. No, no, no, no, no. It must be seen as a book to live by every day.

I'm an academic, so I use the Bible in arenas that you might not. When we lived at Davenport Street, I had quite a few opportunities to interact with the students and professors at the five universities near our house. And I loved showing how the Bible has the answers to the philosophical problems that plague the various disciplines - mathematics, for example. I pointed out yesterday that there are huge debates between the mathematical schools of Logicism,⁹ Intutitionism,¹⁰ Formalism,¹¹ Predicativism,¹² or Platonism.¹³ All of them have been stymied in proving the truthfulness of mathematics. Now, peons like us use mathematics because it works, but can you prove that it is true? Well, if you know the Bible as Jesus understood the Bible, you can prove it. I pointed out yesterday that the Bible provides all the axioms of mathematics, ZF set theory, probability, and statistics, as well as foundations for postulates and theorems. In addition it gives us answers¹⁴ that completely slice through conundrums for mathematicians such as Benacerraf's Epistemological problem.¹⁵ I've got a book by Vern Poythress called Redeeming Mathematics: A God-Centered Approach,¹⁶ that is a marvelous introduction to a Biblical philosophy of mathematics that addresses many issues that most Christians don't know how to answer. And there are other books out there, like James Nichols' book, Mathematics: Is God Silent.¹⁷ I won't bore you with the details,¹⁸ but the bottom line is that the Bible gives answers to the perplexing problems that even academics face in every discipline, by having an omniscient Creator infallibly revealing the axioms for all the disciplines for academics, but also giving the worldview framework within which they make sense.

But it also gives practical answers to ethical dilemmas. I had a dear friend who called me from a Lincoln hospital asking for advice. His cousin had been in a car accident and was declared to be brain dead. My friend had medical power of attorney, and he was being pressured very hard by the hospital to give approval to immediately allow them to harvest all of her organs. And their declaration that she was dead seemed odd to him because he could see that she was breathing. I asked him a few diagnostic questions, and then after going through the ethical principles in the Bible, I explained why the woman was not really dead by a Biblical definition, and under no circumstance should he allow the harvesting of organs unless the situation changed. They were very upset with him. To make a long story short, this supposedly dead woman was up and walking around a week later and perfectly well. She would have truly been dead if he had given permission for the organ harvesting. If I had not known how to counsel the young man on all of the issues at stake from the Bible, she would be dead. So the Bible gives the answers needed to decide which organ transplants are ethical and which ones are not - some are and some are not.¹⁹ The Bible gives answers on what medical procedures are rights given by God and which ones are privileges that cannot be demanded. It answers questions on fertility studies, assisted suicide, the Covid vaccine, and many other medical questions.²⁰ But Christian leaders don't dig into the Scriptures deep enough to find these answers because they are not convinced that 2 Peter 1 is true when it says that the Scriptures have given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Jesus was ready with an answer because He had already dug for answers in the Holy Scriptures.

Jesus reasoned from the objective revelation of the Bible

And that is the third thing that I want you to notice from our text. Jesus reasoned from the objective, written, revelation of the Bible. Matthew 4:4 says, "But He answered and said, "It is written." While the scribes and Pharisees were constantly saying, "You have heard it said," "or rabbi so-and-so said," or the fathers have said, Jesus bypassed the wisdom of man and said, "It is written." Jesus reasoned from the Bible. The Bible must be our axiomatic starting point for every area of life.

The Reformer, John Wycliffe, said, "All law, all philosophy, all ethics are in Scripture. In Holy Scripture is all truth." Now, he is not saying that the Bible is a textbook in the modern definition. Instead, he is saying that just as all mathematics flows from starting axioms (but the math textbooks still need to be written based on those foundations), all truth in other disciplines flow from the starting axioms of the Bible - enabling textbooks to be written with confidence. All Mathematics, philosophy, music, and truth systems flow from the Bible according to Wycliffe. Was that an exaggeration?

Are there really the foundations for music in the Bible? Yes. I've been reading some of the most recent research on the Biblical foundations of early Western Music, like Gregorian chant and early church music theory. It was all carefully preserved in the diacritical marks of the Hebrew Bible.²¹ And yes, it is not academically respectable to believe that the vowels and diacritical marks are inspired, but I can given you over a dozen academic books that demonstrate very cogently that both the vowels and the diacritical marks were given by inspiration.²² And these marks show not only the notes, and sometimes harmony, but also show variety in tempo, the scale (with the diatonic scale, and a couple of other scales – they obviously experimented with different scales by divine insight). These marks show the meter (which is sometimes 5/4, 4/4, and other meters). Josephus (a first century historian) spoke about the different meters in which the Psalm music was written by David. The writings by John Gill, John Owen, and modern writers like Thomas D. Ross, Heath Henning, Joseph Weissman, Suzanne Haik-Vantoura, and John H. Wheeler have provided solid proof that the Reformers were right. I have some stunning evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls and from other areas that both vowel points and diacritical marks preceded the first century - not the 7th to 10th centuries AD like modern scholars claim. But the point is, we shouldn't assume that these older writers were exaggerating till we examine the evidence. Now, I have barely begun my research on music, with some of it being way above my competency. But so far I have given 19 simple but practical lessons that directly relate to our music team at the Worship Music Workshop. In any case, it makes perfect sense in terms of the philosophy that Scripture sets forth.

Luther said about Scripture that it is "in itself most certain, most easily understood, most plain, is its own interpreter, approving, judging, and illuminating all the statements of all men.... Therefore nothing except the divine words are to be the first principles [that's a synonym for "axioms" – the first principles] for Christians; all human words are conclusions drawn from them and must be brought back to them and approved by them."²³ Well, I dare say that very few Christians live that way, but that is the Reformation principle. The Bible (God's inspired revelation) provides the axioms or starting points or presuppositions upon which all thought, research, planning, and teaching should be based, tested, and evaluated. That's what yesterday's conference was all about.

This is a paradigm for mankind, not just for Israel

The next word in the sentence is the word "man." "But He answered and said, ‘It is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."' " Notice that it doesn't say, "Israel needs to live by every word." No, the word "man" indicates that the paradigm He is about to give goes way beyond Israel, and includes mankind as a whole. And that is so important to understand. Dr. Greg Bahnsen spent a great deal of time defending that proposition. Too many Christians bypass huge portions of the Bible as being irrelevant to Gentiles.

In all the debates over God's case laws, people get distracted into trying to figure out which laws were moral laws for all mankind and which laws were ceremonial laws only intended for Israel. And that is indeed an important debate when it comes to ethics. We do need to understand that. The ceremonial law is not morally binding. But let me tell you something: ethics is just one small part of life, and we shouldn't think that because the ceremonial laws are no longer ethically binding that they are unimportant for living. Those ceremonial laws are absolutely packed with information for living. For example, several of the axioms of mathematics are found in the ceremonial law. Without the ceremonial law, you would not have a sufficient foundation for math. And if you like classical geometry, you will have a heyday studying the detailed structure of tabernacle and temple. Don't think that God intended to bore us to tears with irrelevant details when He described in great detail the number and shape of rings and clasps on every tapestry, and its length and width and how it was held up. Why would He include all that detail if it is no longer relevant for us? Sir Isaac Newton went crazy over that stuff. He loved it, and said that it was the Bible that gave him insight into many of his discoveries. Twelve years ago I reread with fascination Sir Isaac Newton's discussions of the Biblical cubit and his look at the geometry of the temple and its relationship to the size of the earth.²⁴ It's mind-blowing. He wasn't even an Orthodox Christian, but he had far more confidence in the wisdom of the Bible than most Bible believing Christians today do. It's sad. (And by the way, once this sermon gets up on the web, I will provide a boatload of footnotes that will give you references to books and articles that can lead you into further study.)

My point is that in addition to giving Israel essential information for their ceremonial worship, those passages give us essential information on health, math, geometry, aesthetics as well as giving us incredible symbolism of Christ, covenant, grace, and other kingdom realities. I read some amazing health issues that came from the ceremonial law – it was a critique of some modern fad diets. For example, one fad diet says that it is unhealthy to eat meat, and you are damaging your body if you eat meat. It was advocating for vegetarianism on the false assumption that what Adam and Eve ate before the Fall is best for us. Yet God commanded the Israelites to eat meat several times, including of course, at the Passover. Would God really command Jews to eat meat if was unhealthy? No! This essay was not trying to impose the ceremonial law. Not at all. Instead, it was using the ceremonial law to show that it is legalism to mandate that we not eat meat. We are free to eat meat if we want to. The same essay corrected fad diets that forbid salt, saturated animal fats (yum, yum, yum!), honey, fruit, grains, and cheese, etc. She said that those laws were intended by God for Israel's good, and therefore, even though they are not binding, they demonstrate the falsity and the legalism of these fad diets. Do you get the point? Now, I will have more to say about that in a bit. But we must live by even the ceremonial laws in some sense of the term "live" or we contradict Christ's words here. The Bible is not just for Israel. It is for mankind – every word of it. It gives wisdom for living.

The Bible is not a replacement for living but the foundation for living

Now, the next phrase indicates that the Bible is not a replacement for living but the foundation for living. Jesus did not say, "Man shall not live by bread, but only by the Word of God." That would turn us all into ivory tower theologians who only study and end up starving to death. Instead, Jesus wanted us living out the Scriptures by taking dominion of and subduing planet earth to His glory. There is work to be done, but every bit of our dominion work must rest on the foundation of Scripture. The moment we exclude the Scripture from rocks, bread, or any other area of life, we have entered the realm of humanism and independence. This was the great temptation of Adam and Eve. Their attitude was basically, "Who cares what God said about the trees? We can be scientists and figure this out for ourselves. We will judge for ourselves whether the fruit of this tree is good to eat." So Jesus was making exactly the same point that Deuteronomy 8 was – God tests us as to whether we will handle stones, food, and the rest of life by living according to His Word or whether we will take dominion independently of God's will.

This means that it is impossible to glorify God by keeping our head in our books. Yes, God does intend us to master the Bible so that whether we eat, or drink, or whatever we do, we will do all to the glory of God. But we must live out the Scriptures in science, architecture, farming, chemistry, and every area of life. We must have orthopraxy as well as orthodoxy; godly living as well as godly thinking. Or as Jesus worded it, in addition to loving God with our mind, we must also love Him with our heart, soul, and strength. Now, obviously the Bible gives us a great deal of liberty to be creative in our dominion and develop new things on the foundation of the Bible. That's why I said that the Bible is not a replacement for living but the foundation for living.

Every word of Scripture is important

The next word indicates that every word of Scripture is important. But He answered and said, "It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.' " This is a call to live by the whole Bible, and not just the New Testament. It is a call to live by every word in the Holy Scriptures.

I remember when I first began to realize that the church is still in the infancy stage of applying Scripture to life. I was at Covenant College, furiously taking notes as my genius math professor, Dr. J. C. Keister, was at the blackboard writing out a handful of axioms of mathematics from the Bible – just using ordinary exegesis. One of those axioms struck me. He was demonstrating the distributive law of addition as revealed by God. The distributive law of addition is a pretty basic axiom - that a(b + c) = ab + ac. Now, the passages that demonstrate this law were boring passages that I had read numerous times, and yet I had never seen this obvious truth of mathematics. It had only become obvious because someone had pointed it out to me. I had never seen it before because I wasn't looking for it. My limited vision of what to expect from the Bible blinded me to its existence.

Our minds tend to filter all kinds of stuff out. My wife knows this. I don't know how many times I have had to ask my wife to help me to find something on my desk or in some room. I know it is there, but I can't see it. Usually the problem is that I am looking for something that doesn't exist. Perhaps I think the book is red, when in reality it is blue. So even though the book I am looking for is right in front of me, my mind filters it out because it isn't red. Well, that's what often happens when we read the Scriptures. Because we don't expect the Bible to speak to various disciplines, our mind filters out the times that it does speak. In fact, during my devotions the day before Dr. Keister was writing this axiom on the blackboard, I had been reading precisely that passage and had wondered why God worded the passage so awkwardly. If God were simply telling a story, He could have worded the same history much more simply and elegantly. And I had thought, "Oh, well. God can do it however He wants." But when I saw that God was also communicating an axiom of mathematics – boom! the lights went on. It had to be worded in exactly that awkward way for it to communicate what God intended it to communicate. And I began looking much more carefully at Scripture. I began wondering what other axioms of other disciplines I had been missing. And as a result of that one event, I began noticing all kinds of amazing things in the order of words, the selection of words, the repetition of words. Every word in the Bible is significant. In fact, Paul makes a big deal about the singular form of the word "seed." And Jesus makes a big deal about the smallest jots and tittles of words.

It dawned on me that I had not been living by every word that proceeds out of God's mouth. I had just been living by the general meaning of strings of words. But when Jesus builds a doctrine of the resurrection on the tense of a verb, and Paul builds a doctrine on whether a word is singular or plural, and Paul later refutes feminism by the order of events in Genesis 2, I realized that I better take this word "every" a bit more seriously than I had been. We are to live by every word in the Bible.

And when we have faith that every word counts, we will start seeing all kinds of new things. We will start seeing every law of logic revealed and used in the Bible - long before Aristotle developed logic. I am hoping to put these up on the future Great Axioms website.²⁵ But others have made a start at doing this as well. E. Calvin Beisner gave five lectures on logic in the Bible at the Christian Worldview Student Conference. That by itself is a fantastic introduction to logic - just using the Bible.²⁶ Vern Poythress has also written a book, called Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation of Western Thought.²⁷ When you dig into those lectures and books, you begin to see logic being used all over the Bible - right on the surface. even a small passage like Matthew 12:24-30 uses eight different laws of logic.

And when we have a confidence that God makes every word count, we will see the starting axioms for biology. And actually, we will see a lot more than simply axioms – we will see interpretation, worldview issues, and principles that will keep us from going down dead end roads in biological research and wasting millions of dollars - like modern evolutionary scientists are doing today - what a waste! And I first began seeing some of these things at the same school that Dr. Keister taught at. There was a biology professor there by the name of Dr. Lothers. And he showed the brilliant purpose of God's taxonomy of creatures and how it contrasts with the evolutionary taxonomy in our textbooks. I hadn't even thought about that before. And he gave some very interesting insights into biology based on that taxonomy. And I could go on and on in pointing to things that most Christians completely ignore.

The fact that we are not even remotely living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shows that we are still in the infancy of the church - at the most, the toddlerhood of the church. I don't think that we are at the end of history by a long shot. I wouldn't be surprised if we have another 100,000 years of history ahead of us. And there are many hints of that. For example, when the Bible says that God will be faithful in history to a thousand generations of those who love Him, that mandates that history be at least 40,000 years long. Why? If a generation is 40 years long, then simple math tells us that a thousand generations is 40,000 years. And we are only done with 6000 years of history. I would love to get a peek into how Christians will be using the Scriptures 10,000 years from now. If we saw that it would probably blow us away. But hey, God doesn't expect as much of infants as He does of adults. The church really is still an infant when you think about it. But still, we should keep pressing forward, growing up, and maturing in our understanding of the application of the Bible, and constantly making new discoveries.

Every discipline in which I have been looking into the Scriptures has been like a window opening up whole new fields that I would love to explore but don't have the time. For example, I was refreshing my memory on research that has been done on fractal geometry in the Bible.²⁸ Others are working on Biblical information on space having physical structure, space having some sort of polarity (in other words a north), space being elastic, expansion of the universe, and information being in our physical bodies. Scriptural statements like that give me goose bumps. It makes me want to run down a rabbit trail that I don't have time to run down. And Poythress points to other information in the Bible that may well give rise to another scientific revolution if Christian scientists will only take it seriously.²⁹ You miss those kinds of things if you aren't looking at every word of Scripture.

Propositional truth

Anyway, Matthew 4:4 goes on to speak of every word. Every word indicates that Christianity is not simply about feelings, experiences, relationship, relaxation, and work. Yes, it involves those things, but all of those things must be governed by something more foundational – words, or what Francis Schaeffer spoke of as propositional truth. Words are important to God, and an understanding of propositional truth is critical to healthy living. We live in an age when people don't have much appreciation for that, but we will never become a mature Christianity until we become a people of the book, and until we see sola Scriptura as the defining characteristic of Christianity, and until we use logical thinking to wrestle with the text.

Revelation from God

The eighth feature of this paradigm is that these words are a revelation from God Himself. It speaks of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. The phrase, "proceeds from" shows something coming from God to man. It deals with epistemology – in other words, how do we know that we know anything. And the answer is inspired revelation; not evidence, but revelation. And the Reformed church has got to get back to this. We do not know truth through science - sorry! We evaluate whether scientific statements are true or not through the Bible.

There is plenty of evidence all around us that unbelievers reject and that even believers doubt. In Luke 16, Jesus gave the story of the rich man and Lazarus. When the rich man was burning in hell, he looked up to paradise and asked Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to speak to his brothers so that they wouldn't come to hell. He wanted to give his brothers evidence of the afterlife. He thought that evidence could save them. But Jesus relates,

Luke 16:29 Abraham said to him, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.'

Luke 16:30 And he said, "No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'

Luke 16:31 But he said to him, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.' "

Where is God's focus? Not on evidences, but on the Word of God; not on miracles (as important as those are), but on the Word of God; not on experiences, but on the Word of God. And if we have a faulty view of revelation, it will mess everything else up.

Liberals believe that words have no objective meaning. They don't hold to a correspondence view of words, where a word has objective meaning and corresponds very literally to some objective reality. They can't because they don't believe that the words of Scripture have the same meaning for us as they did when they came out of the prophet's mouth. They believe that any word I speak will be so colored by my understanding that it will be quite different from the meaning of the same word that another person speaks. So liberals are skeptical of absolute truth. Experience is more important to them than meaning. They don't mind having an experience with the Bible, but they don't go to the Bible for truth. And there are a lot of implications of this phrase which I simply don't have time to get into. But evangelicals sometimes fail to take seriously this phrase in their view of knowledge.

For example, this does affect the debate between Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark on the nature of knowledge and words. I love Van Til, as you could see from my lecture yesterday. But this is one area that I disagree with Van Til on. And a number of modern Van Tillians (like John Frame) have adopted Gordon Clark's view on at least that point. And I think it is an important point. I am glad that Van Til and Gordon Clark became friends toward the end of their lives, and Van Til actually apologized for the rift that he (especially his followers) had created. I give him credit for that. But let me quickly summarize the three views:

1. Liberals say that what God thinks and what I think are in two different orbits. There is no identity of meaning. There is no univocal meaning. So they hold to equivocal view of knowledge.
2. Gordon Clark said that since God has truly had words traveling from His mouth to a prophet's mouth and those same words are written down into the Bible, the words themselves must be a true communication of at least a bit of God's mind into our minds. Otherwise it is not a revelation. So he held to the univocal view of knowledge.
3. The early Van Til insisted that there is no exact point of identity between the words in God's mind and the words in our mind. Instead, there is just an analogy. It is like what God thinks. So he held to the analogical view of knowledge.

Now, it is true that he was trying to defend the transcendence of God (which is a good thing), but where he went wrong is that he said that there is no correspondence whatsoever between what God is thinking and what we are thinking when a given word or a given object is thought about. But that leads to skepticism as well. And I think a number of Van Tillians have recognized that. I certainly have. If a revelation from God to man has occurred, and God's very words have traveled from His mouth and been placed into the Bible, then it is a univocal rather than an analogical revelation. We are called to think the same thoughts as God is thinking when we read the Scripture. After all, those very words came from His mouth. And Douglas Douma's marvelous biography of Gordon Clark³⁰ shows that Van Til softened on this point toward the end of his life.

The Bible has all the authority of God

But if the point I have just talked about is true, then that means that the Bible has all the authority and power of God behind it. The Bible is infallible and inerrant because God is infallible and never makes mistakes. Matthew 4:4 speaks of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. When Scripture speaks, it is God Himself speaking to you - which reinforces the previous point. And so Hebrews 4 says that the Scripture has the attributes of God backing it up. God is powerful, so His Word is powerful. God sees and exposes all things, so Hebrews 4 says that His Word sees and exposes all things in our hearts. God gives life, so the Scriptures give life. God gives healing, so the Scriptures give healing. If we took at all seriously the transforming power of the Scriptures, we would be memorizing vast sections of Scripture, and meditating on them day and night. From the time I was six years old I was made to spend half an hour of each day before breakfast memorizing Scripture. Why? Because it is God's very word to us, and Proverbs says that we need to treat it as being more precious than silver or gold. Very few Christians treat it that way. If they really believed it, they would memorize it, meditate on it, and treat it more precious than they do. Moses said this in Deuteronomy 32:

Deut. 32:46 … "Set your hearts on all the words which I testify among you today, which you shall command your children to be careful to observe—all the words of this law.

Deut. 32:47 For it is not a futile thing for you, because it is your life, [let me repeat that: "because it is your life"] and by this word you shall prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess."

Even those who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture often have a low view of the Scriptures, because they are not living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. How many times have you even read through the entire Bible? Do you meditate on the Scriptures day and night? If not, why not? Deuteronomy 8 says that prosperity in living does not come from the abundance of things and of food. Satan was hoping to tempt Jesus to think the opposite. But Deuteronomy affirms that prosperity comes from hiding God's Word in our hearts, meditating upon it day and night, and conforming our lives to its every precept. When you do this you are going to experience yourself dreaming the Scripture. Joshua 1 tells us

Josh. 1:8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

That's exactly what the apostle Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:15.

…Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all.

Do you really believe that this is God Himself giving His most precious possession to you – giving you His very words? If you really believed it, you might treat it differently. Psalm 1 says that if you really believe it you won't walk in the counsel of the ungodly (which is basically what government school amounts to) because the counsel of God is so much more precious. Psalm 1 says,

Psa. 1:1 Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night. 3 He shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper. 4 The ungodly are not so, But are like the chaff which the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. 6 For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Christians must stop walking in the counsel of the ungodly when it comes to economics and have a thoroughly Biblical economics - which is the antithesis of socialism. And one book that I would encourage you to start with is Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, by David Chilton.³¹ That is perhaps the finest introduction to Biblical economics and worldview that can be had. The second one is Prosperity and Poverty, by E. Calvin Beisner,³² also a fine introduction. It shows you how Van Tillians and Clarkians can come to the same conclusions. Obviously you can dig so much deeper on biblical economics than those two books, but wow - I would start there.

Christians must stop walking in the counsel of the ungodly when it comes to politics. The "every word" that Deuteronomy was referring to in context included every word of the case law of Deuteronomy. The case laws of the Pentateuch are an incredibly rich repository of information for business, economics, science, ethics, politics, etc. But most Christians in America reject the case laws of Deuteronomy. They are directly disobeying Christ in Matthew 4:4. And in terms of politics, Deuteronomy said that there is nothing to be embarrassed about. Evangelicals today are embarrassed when Deuteronomy calls for the stoning of dangerous juvenile delinquents. I am not. It is the perfect answer to the horrible abuse parents have been receiving from their delinquent children in the Bronx and other parts of New York City. Those parents are in fear of their lives. Of course it takes both parents to testify against such a son. The police in Omaha are being criticized for killing Noemi Guzman, who had kidnapped a boy and was in the process of slashing his face and trying to stab him. She had engaged in violent acts before this but was not punished because of insanity. These liberal organizations defending Noemi Guzman are as crazy as her. We need to get back to Biblical justice.

And actually, the Bible prophesies that all nations will eventually live by God's law. And Deuteronomy 4:5-9 shows how - it says that when Christian nations begin to live by Biblical law and are consequently prospered by God, it will cause other nations to become jealous and to desire to have the same laws that bring such blessing. It's already happened. That's how Vishal Mangalwadi became jealous of Christianity and became a Christian. He saw the incredible blessings that came to the West when the West was willing to live by every Word of God.

Conclusion

I'll end with one more passage from Jesus. It's in the next chapter: Matthew 5:17-19.

Matt. 5:17   “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

If you both live by and teach others to live by the case laws of the Old Testament, Jesus considers you to be great in the kingdom. And when Jesus referred to the "least of these commandments" he was referring to Deuteronomy 22:6 – the passage which prohibits taking both a mother bird and her young. It says that you need to let the mother bird go. You may not understand the purpose of that law, which the Jews considered to be the least of the laws, but Jesus said that till heaven and earth passes away, even that law is still relevant. The last I looked, heaven and earth hasn't passed away yet. Very literally, we are to live by every word that proceeds out of God's mouth. And in our Deuteronomy series, that it exactly what we are trying to do. So even though I have repeated some thoughts this morning that you heard twelve years ago, I hope it reenergizes you to study God's Word. Amen.