Well, good evening.

Tom commented to me as I was coming up, I got a little bit of extra time.

And I had asked Nathan this evening in light of Right Hand of Fellowship, how long did I have? And he said, till the rapture.

It is such a joy to be with you all once again.

I thank Nathan and the elders for the privilege of being able to participate in this.

And my goal for this evening is that we would leave not only informed, but encouraged, encouraged in the Lord.

to be with you all this evening.

I am so thankful for Nathan and the elders for first thinking of this series to shepherd us and to allow me to participate in it.

As alluded by actually Nathan last week, this message is indeed going to be what I like to call a Lerman.

Just like A lion and a tiger makes a liger.

Or breakfast and lunch makes brunch.

This is a Lerman.

Talk to us about some of these different fronts related to sufficiency.

This is so good.

I think people can even hear from that.

There's so many doctrinal issues, but not just doctrinal, very practical.

How you think about your daily life, how you categorize things in your life, how do you make decisions in your life? All of these things relate to the sufficiency of Scripture.

and maybe to start in the broadest kind of categories sufficiency is undermined when you put something on the same pedestal as scripture it could be your own experience like the charismatic movement it could be supposed revelation that you received it could be psychology it could be science the issue of creation is a matter also of sufficiency.

Does the Bible, when it talks about Genesis 1 or the flood or other things, does it speak finally and definitively? Or does something share equal authority, equal platform so that it can negate, override, or overcome what the scripture says.

Do you have a final list of speakers yet who's going to be speaking at it? Tell us a little bit more about the summit and some of the particulars of it.

Right.

So people say, "Well, how else am I gonna win people?" Well, if the Bible is describing reality, and the Bible says the word does a work in the heart of man, God transforms.

He is the one that makes blind eyes see, whether you're looking at John chapter really 7 through 9, or you're looking at 2 Corinthians chapter 4, or, or you're looking at regeneration, Titus 3:5, or whatever it may be, that is what God does, and He does it through 2 Timothy 4, "Preach the Word, preach the word." Well, if, if that's the way God works, if that's what's really happening, do you trust that that's what's really happening? Or do you have to manufacture your own way because you don't believe that that's really happening? You don't believe that's what God is really doing.

You don't believe what He has laid out objectively as, "This is the truth.

This is the way I work.

This is the way church should work." You don't believe that.

And, and that's the tension that I think people, uh, often fall into and, and don't realize that they're making a decision practically to undermine the authority of scripture, and that's the whole issue of sufficiency.

Amen.

So in light of Joe's example, that Jo- that he's setting for us of what it looks like to suffer well, how can we imitate that? How do we suffer well from a biblical perspective?

Such an important question, and I think an answer could be just to watch that video that Joe just did over and over again, because you see all the passages of scripture exemplified.

You, you see someone who counts it all joy when they go through suffering.

You see somebody who wants to grow closer to Christ, who, who seeks the Lord.

You see someone who really lives out exactly Psalm 119:71, which is, "It is good for me to be afflicted so that I would learn your word." Joe has said to me over and over again, "There's just one thing I really wanna do during this time." I said, "What is it?" "I just want to listen and read the Bible." And, and that is so vital because it tells you where someone's heart is at.

And that is so vital because our Lord says in John 15 that we are to abide in Him.

He is the vine, we are the branches.

[laughs]