Well, it is indeed a privilege
to be here with you tonight. This has been on my calendar
for a very long time, and I have looked with great anticipation
for this evening to spend this with you. I'll have the privilege
tomorrow as well, but this is a grand opportunity for us to
gather in the name of the Lord. I know that you've come with
a sense of anticipation as well. that the Lord would meet with
you, that the Lord would minister His Word to you, and that you
would be filled to overflowing with fullness of zeal and passion
for the Lord. I want to thank Josh Bice for
his hosting this conference, that this is now my third year
to be able to preach at this conference, and each year it
just seems to be growing and deepening and spreading, and
extending, and who is to say what God will have in store to
come from this conference in the years ahead. I'm thankful
for these other men who have come to speak as well. It's a
very extraordinary gathering of speakers that have been assembled,
myself excluded, of course, but it's a very wonderful thing for
me to be able to be here so that I can hear these men preach the
Word of God as well. This conference is on the Word
of God. It is on the Bible. And as I
visited with Josh about this, together, as we put our heads
and hearts together, it seemed that there should be one message
that would be focused upon the war on the Word. So, I invite
you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the very first book
in the Bible, the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 3. And I would
like tonight to speak to you on this war on the Word of God
that finds its origin at the very beginning of human history. My text tonight is Genesis chapter
3, verses 1 through 7, and I want to begin by reading this passage. And as I read this passage, dealing
with the war on the Word, It seems to be most appropriate
to say that as I read, I am reading from the inspired, the inerrant,
the infallible, the authoritative, the all-sufficient, immutable,
invincible Word of the living God. Genesis chapter 3 beginning
in verse 1, Now the serpent was more crafty
than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he
said to the woman, indeed has God said, you shall not eat from any tree
of the garden? The woman said to the serpent,
from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But from the fruit of the tree,
which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall
not eat from it or touch it or you will die. The serpent said
to the woman, you surely will not die. For God knows that in
the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened. you will
be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that
the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the
eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from
its fruit and ate. And she gave also to her husband
with her, and he ate. the eyes of both of them were
opened, and they knew they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves
together and made themselves loin coverings." Since the beginning of time,
there has long been an unholy war declared by Satan on the
Word of God. The very first temptation was
a temptation to doubt the truthfulness of the Word of God. The very
first slander of God was an attack upon the integrity of His will,
of His Word. The very first sin against God
was a blatant defiance and disobedience of His Word. From the dawn of
human history, all of the artillery of hell has been aimed at and
unleashed upon the authority of the Word of God. This has
always been the front-line attack by the devil. This has always
been the principal assault since the very beginning. This onslaught
is so deadly because when the Word of God is assailed, Everything
else that is holy and pure and right comes crashing down. When the Word of God is undermined,
then the one true saving gospel has been set aside. When the
Word of God has been sabotaged, the person and work of Christ
are undermined. The plan of salvation is subverted. The deity of Christ is dissipated. The exclusivity of salvation
in Christ alone is exterminated, and the certainty of divine judgment
and the eternality of heaven and hell is annulled. When the foundations of the Word
of God are destroyed, everything that rests upon it comes crashing
down. Dr. Al Mohler, president of Southern
Seminary, has written this, quote, "'The most contentious debates
for Christians are at their most fundamental level arguments over
biblical inerrancy and authority. The issues of greatest debate
in our time are along the fault line of biblical inerrancy and
authority.'" In many ways, church history is nothing more, Mohler
writes, than a battle for the Bible. the accuracy, trustworthiness,
and authority of Scripture have existed at the heart of most
major Christian controversies, from early formulations of the
doctrine of the Trinity in the first four ecumenical councils
to the challenge of feminist theology in the 1960s and 70s. Moeller writes, until the Lord
returns, the front-line battle in the church separating heresy
from orthodoxy will always be the inspiration, the inerrancy,
and the authority of the Word of God. Now, this is why these
opening verses in Genesis 3 are so important. Here is the first
attack upon the inerrancy of the Word of God. Here we learn
much about the diabolical strategy of Satan to overturn the Word. Here is the modus operandi of
the devil himself. let us learn because we see it
being replicated in our very own day. There is a downward
spiral in this text, and I want to trace it for you verse by
verse. So, I want you to note the beginning
of this attack, number one, doubt. Satan begins his war on the Word
by subtly sowing seeds of doubt. Where God has put a period, the
devil has put a question mark. Beginning in verse 1, now the
serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field. This serpent was a real serpent
created by God, a snake-like reptile, that would be used by
Satan himself to be his mouthpiece through whom he would speak and
through whom he would project his voice, much like the devil
spoke through Peter when Jesus had to say, "'Get behind me,
Satan!' Now the serpent was more crafty." This word, crafty, means
cunning, shrewd. scheming, calculating, sneaky,
deceitful. The serpent was more crafty than
any beast of the field which the Lord had made. It was the
Lord who had made this serpent. It was the Lord who had made
Lucifer the sun of the morning, until iniquity was found in Lucifer,
and he was cast down to this earth to become the chief opponent
of God. And this serpent would now become
the instrument by which Satan would spread his lie. And he
said to the woman, Satan takes the initiative in this attack.
This is his ambush. Deceptively, Satan bypassed the
man and tempts the weaker vessel, knowing the weakness of the stronger
vessel for the weaker vessel. And by directing his attack at
the weaker vessel, he will have the most direct trajectory at
the stronger vessel. Satan actually spoke through
the snake in addressing Eve. So, he says, indeed, really? Are you sure? Come now, has God
said? Here's the first question in
the Bible. Here is a seemingly innocent
question. it is cleverly designed to establish
a beachhead in the mind of Eve." Satan begins with a subtle question
that conceals his true intent. What he is saying is, is it really
true that God has said? Can you be sure about this? Could
this not be taken a number of different ways? Could it not
be a matter of semantics? Do we have to take this literally? Satan's target was Eve's mind. The battle is always for the
mind. This is where it begins. The
battle is fought first in the mind. Satan is after the thinking
of the mind. Here is the initial point of
attack. Here is the first crack in the dam. Here is the first
link in the chain to feel the stress and will ultimately break. Down through the centuries, every
attack of Satan in one way or another begins by casting doubt
upon the Word of God. And even in the day and age in
which we live, He continues to cast His doubt in the minds of
many. We send our children off to school
and their professors and teachers begin to cast seeds of doubt
into their mind in an attempt to pry open their thinking such
that the rest of what Satan will have to bring to bring destruction
to their lives, it begins with this doubt. Every liberal professor,
every apostate pastor, every liberal denominational worker
is an agent of Satan to the extent that they cast doubt upon the
Word of God. There is always this first point
of attack to cast suspicion upon the Word, to undermine the Word,
to distrust the Word, to suspect the Word, to have some lingering
doubt of uncertainty about the Word. A second, it continues
from the initial tap at the door by casting doubt. Secondly, it
becomes distortion. As we continue to read in verse
1, after the devil has said, indeed has God said The devil
now thrusts the tip of his spear yet deeper into the soul of Eve,
and he says now in the middle of verse 1, you shall not eat
from any tree of the garden. As God said, you shall not eat
from any tree of the garden. Here Satan twists God's Word. Here Satan begins to distort
the Word of God. The devil now charges or changes
what God has said God did not say what Satan claims
God said. Satan intentionally misquotes
and misrepresents God's Word. And back in Genesis 2 and verse
16 we read, the Lord commanded the man, saying, from any tree
of the garden you may eat freely. And yet, Satan now says that
God says, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. In reality, God said the very
opposite. God said you may eat from every tree of the garden
with the exception of just one tree, the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. But Satan now seeks to cast God
in a different light. He attacks the goodness of God,
that God is holding out on you, and that God will not allow you
to eat from every tree of the garden. No, the fact is God is
so good and so merciful and so benevolent and so kind that God
created paradise for Adam to live in. He gave him every good
thing, and on each day of creation, God said, it is good, it is good,
it is good. Adam was living literally in
the lap of abundance and luxury as he lived in paradise, and
yet now Satan begins to distort what God has said. The devil
is such a liar. He is saying to Eve, God is not
good to you. God is holding out on you. There
are some things that God will not allow you to have. And, of course, we know that
every time that God says, you shall not, God is saying, do
not destroy yourself. Is that unloving? No, that is
very kind. Think of a parent who says to
a young child, do not put your hand on a hot stove when it is
glowing orange. Is that unkind? No, that is the
most gracious and kind thing that a parent could say. And
so, it is every time God says, you shall not, it is an expression
of the goodness of God. And every time that God says,
you shall, God is saying, help yourself to happiness. But the devil here is distorting
the Word of God, first casting doubt and then driving yet deeper
and causing a distortion of the Word of God. By the way, the
next time that Satan opens his mouth, and we have the record
of it, will be in Job chapter 1. And you recall in Job chapter
1, as the sons of men were gathering around the throne of God, the
angelic host, there appeared Satan. And God took the initiative,
and God said to Satan, "'Have you considered My servant Job?
There is none like him on the face of the earth. He is blameless
and upright, turning away from evil.' And Satan so shrewdly
said to God, "'You're too good to him. No wonder He serves you. You've
bought Him. You've bought His worship. You
take away all of these things, and He will never worship you.
Do you see how cunning the devil is? Do you see how shrewd and
manipulative he is? He says to Eve, God is not good
to you. He says to God, You're too good
to them. He takes steps back and tries
to pit everyone else against one another. He continues to distort the Word
of God. Notice in verse 2, the woman
said to the serpent, by her response we conclude that she is not surprised
that the servant is able to speak, and she is receiving the serpent
and his counsel as a credible messenger. And she has no idea
that she is dialoguing with the devil himself. So in verse 2,
the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the tree of
the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is
in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat
from it or touch it or you will die. This is a direct reference
to what God had said earlier in Genesis 2, 16, and also verse
17. But there are three significant
modifications to the Word of God here. She is under the spell
of the devil, and Satan has begun to twist the Word of God And
Eve now begins to twist the Word of God. Let me point out these
three serious flaws to you in this statement by Eve. First,
Eve subtracted from God's Word. God said that they may eat from
any tree of the garden, but she dropped the word, any. and minimizes
God's provision. She discounts God's goodness. She is under the influence of
Satan and drops the word enemy any second. Not only does she
subtract from God's Word, she now adds to God's Word. God never said, you shall not
touch it. Eve now is magnifying what she perceives
to be the strictness of God. Yes, she is under the influence
of Satan's attempt now to subvert her faith. Eve was putting God's
words or putting words into God's mouth and exaggerating His command. And then third, Not only does
Eve subtract from and add to, but she softened God's Word. Eve left out a very important
word here. Eve left out the word, surely. God said, in the day that you
eat from it, you shall surely die. But Eve drops the surely
and softens what God has said, and the certainty of divine judgment
in death was removed." She now is following Satan's influence,
and she is distorting the Word of God. This is always the second
step downward after doubting the Word of God. Satan comes
to bring distortion of the Word of God. He alters it. He changes it. He subtracts from
it. He adds to it. He softens it. However, he can distort the Word
of God. We see this unfortunately today
with some Bible translations who think that they can play
fast and loose with the Word of God, and rather than render
a literal translation of God's inerrant and infallible Word,
as they think that they have liberty to reconstruct what God
has said. And so, by their own admission,
we take from God's Word, we add to God's Word, and we soften
God's Word. Sounds very familiar, does it
not? And there is, for example, the gender-neutral TNIV that
turns God who represents Himself with masculine pronouns, represents
Himself in a way other than who He is. John MacArthur comments,
we live in a day when culture is telling the church what the
Bible will be allowed to say. A great illustration of this
is the publication of the TNIV Zondervan Publishing House Bible. It produces a Bible called the
Gender Neutral Bible. It is distinguished by its deference
to the feminist movement. It has altered the Word of God,
changed the Word of God to make it compatible to the contemporary
feminist egalitarian movement. And that is not the only one
that has done it. There are others that have done
it as well. MacArthur writes, the Word of God is never to be
used in such a way as to accommodate a cultural perception. You do
not take the Word of God and twist the Word of God, alter
the Word of God, change the Word of God, embellish the Word of
God, diminish the Word of God in order to achieve something
that accommodates cultural expectations. But that is being done. It is
being done at the very core of many Bible translations. Another such Bible translation
has been produced by the Emergent Church. Its leaders have concocted
a new translation that is called The Voice, not the TV program,
the translation. The creator of this translation
has said, quote, Bringing people to the Bible requires a new way
of presenting Scripture. It requires a translation that
speaks to modern sensibilities, to modern ways of processing
information. So, this new twist has subtracted
from and added to and softened God's Word. For example, let
me quote the translation from John 1 verse 1, which reads,
quote, "'Before time itself was measured, the voice was speaking.' The voice was and is God. This celestial voice remained
ever present with the Creator. And His speech shaped the entire
cosmos. Immersed in the practice of creating,
all things that existed were birthed in Him. His breath filled
all things with a living, breathing light. Light thrives in the depths
of darkness, blazing through murky bottoms. This wanderer, John, who was
ritually cleansed, put in plain words, elusive mystery of the
divine light that all might believe through him. The voice that had
been an enigma in the heavens, I'll tell you what's been an
enigma, is this trash. The voice that had been an enigma
in the heavens chose to become human and live surrounded by
His creatures. Do you hear the hiss of the serpent
in that, adulterating and changing and softening the Word of God? And it never stops here. It is
on the slippery slope, and one thing always leads to something
else. It is always a domino effect. Satan starts with doubt, but
he then inches his way into deception. Listen to the Word of God, Deuteronomy
4 verse 2, "'You shall not add to the Word which I am commanding
you. Do not take away from it.'" Deuteronomy
12 verse 32, "'Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to
do. You shall not add to nor take
away from the Word.'" Proverbs 30 verse 5, every word of God
is tested. Not only the whole, but each
individual part has been tested by God. Verse 6, do not add to
His words. I've spent some time translating
this out of the original Hebrew, and this is exactly what it means.
Do not add to His words. God is saying, read My lips. Do not add to His words or He
will reprove you and you will be found a liar. Let God be found
true. Let every man be found a liar.
In Revelation 22 verse 18, I testify to everyone who hears the words
of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will
add to him the plagues that are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from
the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away
his part from the tree of life and from the holy city. which
are written in this book. Listen, we do not sit above this
book. This book sits above us. We are
not here to sit in judgment on the Bible. The Bible sits in
judgment upon us. And it is Satan's fiendish strategy
from the very beginning to find a crack in the door and to pry
it open. He begins by casting doubt subtly,
craftily, and once he has his foot in the door, he then comes
with deception. But it never stops there. It
is always headed somewhere. And this leads us now, third,
to denial. In verse 4, Satan now brings
about his blatant denial of the Word of God. Here is the rock
in the snowball. Here is his intent from the very
beginning with Eve. It is to deny the Word of God
and to sell that to her naive, gullible self. And so, in verse
4 we read, the serpent said to the woman, you surely shall not
die. That is a lie from the pit of
hell. God said, the soul that sins, it shall surely die. The
prophet Ezekiel said, the soul that sins, it shall die. Paul
says, the wages of sin is death. The serpent said, you shall not
die. Eve's waffling has only emboldened
the devil to advance more aggressively. The devil blatantly now denies
the authority and the integrity of the Word. The devil fires
at her across the broadside and makes a direct hit. The Hebrew
word not, do you see it there in verse 4? You surely will not
die. In the order of the words with
which Moses wrote this recording Satan's words, the word not is
placed at the beginning of the sentence. That is known as the
emphatic position. And literally, this translates,
not, you surely shall die. Not. This is by Satan and all
out in your face, no holes barred, repudiation of the Word of God. No way. It's not going to happen,
Eve. We have these blatant denials
of the Word of God in our day, do we not? There are so many, it's hard
to keep up with them. One popular author, Rob Bell,
writing in Velvet Elvis, sounds like a very spiritual book, doesn't
it? Writing about the wrong king, He writes, a staggering number
of people have been taught that a select few Christians will
spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while
the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in
hell with no chance for anything better. We go, so what's the
point? Bell writes, this is misguided. and toxic, and ultimately subverts
the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness. Do you hear the hiss of the serpent
in that? Bell writes, millions and millions
of people were taught that the center of the gospel is Jesus,
that God is going to send you to hell unless you believe in
Jesus. How could that God ever be good? And how could that ever be good
news? He continues, the most powerful
things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert
people. The church must stop thinking
about everyone in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer
or unbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms
are offensive to those who are the un and non, they work against
Jesus' teachings. Oh yeah, the Jesus who talked
about going to that place where the worm never dies, the many
who are on the broad road headed for destruction, the Jesus who
talked about that place of outer darkness, Bell says salvation is the entire
universe being brought back into harmony with its Maker. Do you hear the hiss of the serpent? Do you ever turn on Christian
television and listen to some of the mind-boggling idiocrity
of what we hear? Some of it not very far from
that. I was walking through an airport two weeks ago and looked
over and saw the magazine rack as I was on a fast-paced walking,
and I saw it said, the Bible, Newsweek. So, I went over and bought a
copy. I thought, I'd love to hear what
this highly spiritual magazine, Newsweek, has to say about the
Bible. title of the article is, The
Bible, So Misunderstood It's a Sin. Obviously, time does not permit
me to read the featured article, but let me just read a few sentences
from it. Quote, "'The Bible' is not the
book many American fundamentalists and political opportunists think
it is, or more precisely, what they want it to be. Nowhere in
the Gospels or Acts or Epistles or Apocalypse does the New Testament
say it is the inerrant Word of God. That is a blind man describing
the Son. This writer goes on, It couldn't. The people who authored each
section had no idea that they were composing the Christian
Bible, and they were long dead before what they wrote was voted
by members of political and theological committees to be the New Testament. The Bible is a very human book. It was written, assembled, copied,
and translated by people. That explains the flaws, the
contradictions, and the theological disagreements in its pages. You
know, you always just want to like hand them a Bible and say,
show me one contradiction. I'm waiting. Show me one error. So, why study the Bible at all,
this article concludes. Since it's loaded with contradictions
and translation errors and wasn't written by witnesses and includes
words added by unknown scribes to inject church orthodoxy, now the hiss of the serpent is
becoming the roar of a lion. distortion, denial, now deification. Notice, if you would please,
in verse 5, the next step down this slippery slope, is to sell
the lie by saying to man, you will now become the standard
of truth within yourself. You will now become like God. This is not a temptation to fall
down, it's a temptation to fall up, to be like God, only be like
God the devil's way. Notice verse 5, for God knows
that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened."
Satan promises Eve that if she will deny God's Word and eat
the forbidden fruit, she will see as God sees, and she will
know as God knows, and you will be like God. knowing good and evil. You will know what God knows
and you will think what God thinks if you will abandon God's Word
and if you will go the way I am pointing, you will know evil
and you will know good. God is so good to us that He
desires us to not have our minds polluted and defiled with the
knowledge of evil that darkens those who bite into such a fruit. Paul writes in Romans, be innocent
of evil, be knowledgeable of good. is the promise of divinity. You'll be like God. It's dumb
enough to believe that. Number one, Mormons, Joseph Smith asserted that mankind
is of the same species as God, being eternal with unlimited
capacity. Lorenzo Smith, an early LDS leader,
proclaimed, quote, as man now is, God once was. They speak
of man as God in embryo. He's not dumb enough to believe
that. Paul Crouch is. Listen, he says, quote, I am
a little God. I have His name. I am one with
Him. I am a little God. No, you are a blasphemer. Kenneth
Copeland, you do not have a God in you, you are one. Do you hear the hiss of the serpent
in this? But so also does the Roman Catholic
Church say this. Article 3, paragraph 460 of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, quote, "'For the Son of God became
man so that we might become God, the only begotten Son of God
wanting to make us sharers in His divinity, assumed our nature
so that He made man might make men gods." No, once you remove the Word of God
as the plumb line, once you remove the Word of God as the inspired,
the inerrant, and the infallible standard of all truth, the highest
arbitrator on every issue, you must replace it with another
standard, and if you remove this standard, the standard that will
be placed is the deification of man, and man becomes the judge
of what is right and what is wrong. And if you will bite into
this apple, you will become like God, you will become the standard
of truth. But it takes another step. we note fifth, duped. Doubt leads
to distortion, and distortion leads to denial. And this spirals
all the way down now until Eve is duped by Satan. And in verse 6 we read, when
the woman saw that the tree was good for fruit. She saw that
this tree of the knowledge of good and evil was good. Eve now sees what Satan wants
her to see. She has a new template. She has
new lenses over her eyes. She has a new worldview that
is now forming. She is a liberated woman. what you believe affects how
you see and what you see. And if you have the truth of
God as found in His Word, you will see the world around you
and see yourself in one manner which is conformed to reality.
But without this standard, as you begin to look through a different
lens, a humanistic lens, one that has come from the devil
himself, you now will see and desire that which is evil. A distorted view of God distorts
how we see everything else. And a distortion of God's Word
causes you to see everything in the world around you differently. And so, in verse 6, as she is
being duped by Satan, we read, and that it was a delight to
her eyes. She now desires what was forbidden
by God. She now delights in that which
God has put a restriction, and we continue to read in verse
6, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise. She concluded she must have misheard
God. She must have misunderstood God. She decided that the serpent
must be telling the truth. And do you see the pendulum swinging?
She is now under the power of Satan. She thinks
up is down and down is up. She thinks right is wrong and
wrong is right. This now leads to number six,
disobedience. because she is now duped and
has another perspective. She has another worldview. She
has another standard. She now is free to do what she
wants to do. She is now free to live and go
her own way. She has bought into the devil's
lie and now joins with him in defying the Word. So, we continue
to read verse 6 now of her disobedience, she took from it and ate, blatantly, deliberately,
intentionally. She broke God's Word and she
violated God's command, and she gave also to her husband with
her The implication is Adam is standing right there. He's with
her. He's been an observer the whole time. And he takes and
he eats with his eyes wide open. Disobedience is always the tragic
result of denying the clear teaching of the Word of God, and such
disobedience inevitably leads to deviant living. Read Romans
1, And when they knew God, they thought not of Him as God, but
were not thankful for God and turned away from the knowledge
of God and turned in another direction. And as they turned
in another direction, God gave them over. God gave them over
to do that which was deviant and defiling. And that is exactly
what we read in verse 7, defilement. As soon as they disobeyed the
Word of God, they were immediately defiled with sin and guilt. Suddenly, they knew they were
dirty. Then, verse 7 begins, then, in
other words, as soon as. You remember God said, in the
day that you eat of this fruit, you shall die. And in that very
day, then, The eyes of both of them were opened and they knew
they were naked. They died spiritually immediately. They began to die emotionally,
and they began to die physically, and now the aging process begins. because sin has now entered the
human race, and sin has now entered into their body, and their eyes
were opened, and they now know evil, and they knew they were
naked, and they were aware of their guilt, and they were aware
of their shame, and they knew that they were soiled. they sewed
fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings to
cover their guilt and their shame." And all this leads to death. Disobedience to the Word of God
always leads to death. The wages of sin has never been
marked down. It remains death at every level,
spiritually, emotionally, physically, and by the sin of one man, by
the one man's disobedience, the many have been made sin. Any departure from the Scripture
always leads to death. Any departure from the Scripture
leads to the death of any denomination, it leads to the death of any
seminary, it leads to the death of any culture, it leads to the
death of any society, it leads to the death of any nation. Any departure from the Scripture
itself is a departure from God Himself. So, we must cling to this book
that has come under such assault and attack. And not only has the written
Word come under attack by Satan, but so also has the living Word
come under attack. And we read in Genesis 3 and
verse 15, and I will put enmity between you and the woman and
between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise you on the
head and you will bruise him on the heel. and it looks ahead
prophetically to the day of the coming of Christ and His first
advent as Christ came into this world as the second Adam to undo
the devastation that was caused by the first Adam. And by the
one man's disobedience, the many have been made unrighteous. By
the obedience of the one man, the Lord Jesus Christ, the many
who put their faith and their trust in Him are made righteous. And what we lost in Adam, we
have more than gained back in the Lord Jesus Christ. And by
His death at the cross, Satan was nipping at His heel and sought
to bruise Him in the but Jesus by His death brought about the
utter defeat of Satan and has crushed the head of the serpent
once and for all. The God of this age has been
cast down, and the Lord Jesus Christ has ascended to the right
hand of God the Father, where He is now enthroned, and all
authority in heaven and earth have been given unto Him. It
is this Jesus Christ, the living Word, who is the truth. His very words are truth, and
the entirety of Scripture is the Word of Christ. Let us have our confidence in
the true Word of God, and let us not be naive like Eve, nor
gullible like the first woman. Let us earnestly contend for
the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. Let us guard the
Word of God with all of our might, knowing that no church will rise
any higher than its unwavering commitment to the inspiration,
to the inerrancy, and to the infallibility of the Word of
God. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank
You that You have revealed Yourself to us, not only in general revelation
in the creation around us, but by special revelation through
Your written Word. We could never know You redemptively
apart from Your Word. Father, how we thank You that
You are not silent, but that You have spoken to us, and that
You have spoken to us with crystal clarity as recorded in Your Word. And we are aware that this Word
is so important to the carrying out of Your purposes here upon
this earth. that from the very beginning
it has come under assault and attack by Satan, knowing that
if the Word is undermined, the very truthfulness of the gospel
itself will be subverted. And so, Father, I pray that Your
church in these days may return to the full integrity and truthfulness
of Your Scripture and that you will make your church strong
in the Word, and that we will resist every advance by Satan
who would seek with cunning to undermine our confidence in
this Word that you have breathed out of your very mouth. Would
you remind us tonight that man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from your mouth. I pray that
you would deepen and enlarge our firm confidence in your word
and that we would never be shaken from it. Father, we pray this
in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior. Amen.