Hello, this is Pastor Patrick Hines, and I want to press on here in my study of
the Westminster Confession, just going over basic Christianity, and I'm hoping
eventually this will be a series. I'll try to keep these around 10 minutes each.
A lot been going on. The last couple weeks I was off for a week, and then I
had to go to Florida to see my daughter sing in the Reformation Chorale, and
then I also had to help my folks out and stuff, so I've been really busy. I
apologize, haven't gotten any videos out the last couple of weeks, but I'm going to
really try to do that more frequently, and I wanted to thank people for the
encouraging emails they sent, telling me they miss the videos, so I do
appreciate that. Okay, so today, the Westminster Confession, Chapter 1.3, the
books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part
of the canon of Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God,
nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings. So the
books of the Apocrypha, they are normally spoken of, listed as seven additional
books that are included in the Roman Catholic Church's canon of the Old
Testament, and Protestants don't accept these, and the primary reason, if you
want to understand that, what is the reason that we do not believe these
books are not part of Scripture? Well, the reason is they are not inspired.
They're not inspired Scripture, and one thing that is important to note is that
the Apocryphal books themselves, you know, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, and Judith, Tobit,
the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Bell and the Dragon, which is an
additional chapter in the book of Daniel, Baruch, an appendix to the book of
Jeremiah, and I might be leaving one or two of them off, but these books deny that
they're inspired. They themselves say that there has been a cessation of
prophecy in Israel, that God is not speaking to his people through prophets
any longer, and the Jewish people never believed that the Apocrypha were part of
Scripture. They knew that Malachi was the final Old Testament prophet that God
had sent them, and that as a matter of fact, God was no longer speaking to his
people through prophets, and so the Apocrypha, in the early church, there were
early Christians who did think that the Apocrypha was part of the Old Testament,
and the primary reason for that was it was usually included in copies of the
Greek Old Testament that they had, the Septuagint version. It's often abbreviated
with LXX, capital LXX, because that's the Roman numeral for 70, because 70
scholars supposedly translated the Old Testament Hebrew into Greek, and the
Greek Septuagint, or Septuagint, whatever you want to call it, the LXX, that is
really the Bible of the early church, because they spoke Greek, and so
they read from that Greek translation, and many of their copies, and this is
obviously long before movable type and things like that, so if you made a book,
you would often include other books in it, as many things as you could for that
that copy of the book, and so they would put other things in it. A lot of copies
of the Septuagint have the Apocrypha in them, and so you do get quotations from
church fathers and people in the early centuries who seemed to think that the
Apocrypha was part of Scripture. However, it is a documented fact, Athanasius did
not believe that the Apocrypha was part of the Old Testament canon. Origen did
not believe the Apocrypha was part of the canon. Jerome did not, and Origen of
Alexandria, whose dates are roughly 185 or so to about 255 AD, he is one of the
very few who knows Hebrew in the early church, and Jerome is another one who
knows Hebrew. He studied Hebrew with rabbis in Jerusalem, and he's the one who
translated the Bible into Latin, and the thing is, historically, the more that a
Christian bishop or a Bible teacher, the more that they knew about the Jews and
about the Jewish backgrounds, the less likely they were to think that the
Apocrypha was part of Scripture. The fact of the matter is, though, the Jews did not
believe that the Apocrypha was part of the Word of God, and these are books that
were written during the intertestamental period, the approximately
400 years between the death of the Prophet Malachi and the coming of John
the Baptist. That 400 year period, that's when the Apocrypha books are written. Now,
the Apocrypha is never cited in these scriptures. It's never cited. And people
will say, well, there's other books of the Old Testament that aren't cited
either in the Old Testament, like Esther is never quoted with, thus saith the Lord
in the New Testament. Which, that is true, and it's also irrelevant, because Esther,
like 2 Chronicles, like the Song of Solomon, is part of the Law, the Prophets,
and the Writings, the threefold division that Jesus himself used. Jesus used that
division in Luke chapter 24. He refers to the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.
And it's important to know that the books of the Apocrypha are not part of
that division. Esther and Song of Solomon and other Old Testament books that
aren't cited as Scripture in the New Testament were part of that threefold
division that's acknowledged by Jesus, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.
One of the things I've often pointed out to folks who do think the Apocrypha is
actually part of the Old Testament canon is the prologue to the Apocryphal book
of Ecclesiasticus cites the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Question, how
can Ecclesiasticus be part of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings when it
acknowledges that's a threefold canonical division of Old Testament
books that already exists? Okay, it doesn't make any sense. Now, the Apocryphal
books are alluded to here and there in the Old Testament, but they are never
quoted as Scripture. They are never quoted with the the Greek verb
gegrepti, which means it is written. It stands written, quote. That's how the New
Testament writers typically, not always, but typically quote from the Old
Testament, it is written, it is written, gegrepti. Now, the Jewish people did not
believe that the Apocrypha was part of the Old Testament canon. Why is that
significant? Well, it's significant because in Romans chapter 3, Paul asks
the question, okay, well, if being circumcised didn't guarantee you eternal
life and if being a Jew didn't guarantee that you were going to go to heaven, well
what good is it then? What is the profit of circumcision? And Romans 3 verse 2
says, much in every way, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of
God, meaning the Jewish people had Scripture. They had the only source of
the voice of God in the world. The only source of God speaking in the world was
theirs, the oracles of God. God did not give Scripture to the Egyptians or the
Moabites or Ammonites or Philistines. He gave Scripture, the oracles of God, the
sayings of God were given only to the Jewish people. That was their chief and
highest blessing. And I want to tell you, as a Christian, that is also your chief
and highest blessing. The fact that you've got one of these, a Bible in your
own language, in your possession, that is without what is revealed in Scripture, we
are lost. Now, the Apocryphal books are not of divine inspiration, therefore
they're not part of the canon of Scripture. They also have very serious
errors in them. Now, people have tried to say, well, people try to say there's
errors in the Bible. There are not. There's no passage in Scripture that
even approximates how bad some of these are. The book of Tobit, the book of Tobit
condones the use of magic in Tobit 6 verses 5 through 7.
The book of Tobit also teaches that forgiveness of sins is by human
effort. Tobit 4 verse 11, for alms deliver from all sin. So giving money can
deliver you from sin and from death and will not suffer the soul to go into
darkness. Tobit 12 verse 9, for alms deliver us from death and the same is
that which purges away sin. So, if you want it, and maketh to find mercy in
everlasting life. So to have eternal life, you need to give money to people. Okay,
that's, that is such a flagrant error. Okay, money is an offering for the sins
of the dead in 2nd Maccabees 1243. In making a gathering, he sent 12,000
drachmas of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of
the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection. There are
also serious historical errors in the the apocryphal books. My favorite one is
this one, Judith, the book of Judith chapter 1 verse 5 says, now in the 12th
year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians who reigned in Nineveh,
the great city, fought against Arphaxad and overcame him. Okay, hold on.
Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon who reigned from Babylon. They've got him
over the wrong empire. Nebuchadnezzar was not king of the Assyrians and he
didn't reign from Nineveh. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. So, wrong empire for
Nebuchadnezzar. And there's others. My favorite apocryphal passage is the final
three verses of 2nd Maccabees. Listen, quote, since my Canor's doings ended in
this way with the city remaining in possession of the Hebrews from that time
on, I will bring my story to an end here too. If it is well written and to the
point, that is what I intended. If it is poorly done and mediocre, that is the
best I could do. Just as it is unpleasant to drink wine by itself or just water
whereas wine mixed with water makes a delightful and pleasant pleasing
drink, so a skillfully composed story delights the ears of those who read the
work. Let this then be the end. So, if he didn't do a good job recording the
history here, well, it's the best he could do. It doesn't have the the mark of
thus sayeth the Lord to it. Okay, now there's a lot more that we can we can
point out here. The fact that Matt, well we won't get into all the stuff
I want to keep this relatively short here, but the primary reason the primary
reason that Rome said these books of Scripture is because there's a passage
in 2nd Maccabees that sort of sounds like purgatory, but it would really
reflect a misunderstanding of purgatory because the fighters that were found had
idols on their persons and idolatry would be a mortal sin, so it wouldn't do
any good to pray for them anyway. But they were losing that debate on
purgatory because when you look in the canonical scriptures, when you look at
the Word of God, there's heaven and there's hell. There's no purgatory
anywhere in Scripture. Nowhere. So the apocryphal books were not received by
the people of God, they were not used by the people of God as Scripture, they were
not acknowledged or used by Jesus as Scripture. And so that brings us to the
end of point number three, and we'll try to get point number four tomorrow. I'm
going to let everyone know I'm going to try to do a live program tomorrow,
Wednesday, at 3. So Lord willing, we'll see you then. Thanks for watching or for
listening.