Transcript Lesson-4 The Authority of the First Century Church

LESSON 4
“THE AUTHORITY OF THE FIRST CENTURY CHURCH”
NEW DURHAM BAPTIST CHURCH
PASTOR FRANK CUOZZO
LESSON 4: THE AUTHORITY OF THE FIRST CENTURY CHURCH
II Timothy 3:13-17, “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and
worse, deceiving, and being deceived. But continue thou in the things
which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou
hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy
scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through
faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished
unto all good works.”
Psalm 119:89, “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.”
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Psalms 119:152, “Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that
thou hast founded them for ever.”
We are able to hold in our hands and hide in our hearts the only
eternal thing that the human eye will ever look upon! Think of
that!
Everything that we see happening around us should be judged
through scriptural eyes, meaning that we should not look at the
world to interpret the Bible; we should search the scriptures to
interpret what is going on in the world. It is impossible to be
spiritual without being scriptural.
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#1) The Inspiration of ALL Scripture
The Bible says that it’s words are “God breathed.” We must
understand that we are not talking about the writers being
inspired, but the very words themselves are inspired by God.
In fact if we believe the testimony of the scripture, we must say
that God always gave the words to the human penmen, but did
not always immediately reveal to them the thoughts.
For example, I Peter 1:10-11 says, “Of which salvation the prophets
have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that
should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the
Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified
beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.”
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In the prior passage we can see that when the OT prophets wrote
of Christ, they actually had to search or study the prophecies that
they themselves had written and even then they did not fully
understand what they had written.
For example in Daniel 12:8-9, Daniel said to God, “And I heard,
but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of
these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed
up and sealed till the time of the end.”
Here we find Daniel writing words given to him by divine
inspiration which Daniel himself could not understand. He had
to think about what he had written. And so even though God
gave him the very words to write, he “understood not.”
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We looked first of all at the inspiration of ALL Scripture,
#2) The Necessity of ALL Scripture
-When we are speaking about the necessity of ALL Scripture we
mean every book, every chapter and every verse.
-Most Christians are only familiar with parts of the Bible but very
few Christians are familiar with “all scripture.”
-In a puzzle, all of the pieces are necessary to complete the whole.
Likewise all sixty-six books of the Bible are necessary to complete
the whole. If you studied several books of the Bible to the
exclusion of the others than you would only know a portion of
what God wants you to know about Himself. The Bible is God’s
revelation of Himself to us and we need all scripture if we want to
know more about God.
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And so it behooves every one of God’s children to read the Bible,
to search the scriptures, to meditate on them, to memorize them
and to ask God by His Spirit to teach us what He wants us to
know about Himself in each book.
We need certain pieces of clothing on our bodies to be
completely dressed. It takes every piece to be properly attired. If
we take one or more pieces of clothing out of our daily wardrobe,
then we would not be properly attired and something would be
missing.
Without knowing all scripture, we would miss much of what God
has for us.
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#3) The Sufficiency of ALL Scripture
Colossians 2:9 says, “For in him (Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily.”
The Bible teaches us that Christ is all-sufficient. That means that
He is all we need. By declaring that the scriptures are all-sufficient
is declaring that God’s word meets our every need and that we
can go to His word to have our needs met.
Our greatest need is salvation and God says the first thing His
word does is make us “wise unto salvation.” Paul told Timothy in II
Timothy 3:15, “And that from a child thou hast known the holy
scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation.”
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The Bible goes on to say that, “All scripture is given by inspiration of
God, and is profitable for doctrine.” Doctrine is what we believe and
teach. Therefore we find in the Bible what we are to believe about
such things as life and death, heaven and hell, past and future
events and many issues of life. Our philosophy for life should
come out of our theology and what we know to be true about
God.
In II Timothy 3:16 & 17 Paul goes on to say that, “All scripture is
given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be
perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”
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Paul gives a list to Timothy known as the works of the Word of
God. They are,
-Reproof- This means God’s word shows us where we are wrong.
God’s word is truth and truth reveals error.
-Correction- This means God’s word shows us what is right.
-Instruction in Righteousness- This means that God’s word tells
us how to do what is right. Why?
-That the man of God may be perfect- This means complete or
mature. In other words, everything we need in the Christian life
to be a mature Christian is found in the Word of God.
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-Thoroughly furnished unto all good works- Everything we need
to equip us to be the laborers we must be, we can get from the
Bible. Look no further than God’s word for a manual for the
Christian life.
Because of these facts about the very Words of God, we should
seek as much as possible to use the very language of Scripture
when speaking of the things of God because God’s words are,
 More powerful
 More Authoritative
 Clearer
 More Convicting
 More Complete
than man’s words.
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Consider the following examples comparing God’s words versus
Man’s words,
God’s Words
Man’s Words
“Drunkard” (Prov 23:21)
“Complete” in Christ (Col 2:10)
“Looking Unto Jesus” (Heb 12:2)
“Eternal Life” (John 10:28)
“Alcoholic”
“Balance”
“Focus”
“Once saved always
saved”
“Affair”
“Fib or little white
lie”
“Adultery or Fornication” (Exod 20:14)
“False Witness” (Exod 20:16)
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The first century church was a church that was wholly dependent
upon God and His word. To become more like a first century
church we must have a revolution back to the Bible!
Next lesson- The Doctrine of the First Century Church.
Acts 2:41-42 says, “Then they that gladly received his word were
baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three
thousand souls. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine
and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”
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