Our sufficiency is not from men. Our sufficiency is not from human wisdom. Our sufficiency is not from human resources. Our sufficiency is from God. Our sufficiency, what does that mean?
That means our capability of living life in God's plan to the maximum is from Him. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Is the Bible still relevant? Parts of it were written over two thousand years ago, and those are some of the newest parts of the Bible.
Most of it is older than that.
So does that mean it has nothing to say about the issues you face in 2025? Consider that today as we begin a study titled The Sufficiency of Scripture, one of John's most popular from his 56 years of ministry.
Now, critics of this topic, the sufficiency of scripture, often talk about what scripture can't do. They'll point out that the Bible doesn't teach you physics or medicine or how to get a job or how to prepare a meal. And they'll remind you that life is complex, so you need more than the Bible to navigate it well. At least, that's how the argument goes. But when we say Scripture is sufficient, We aren't saying that it answers every question there is.
John MacArthur brings helpful clarity to the doctrine of biblical sufficiency in the study we're about to begin.
So follow along now as John shows you the sufficiency of Scripture. There is, I believe, a strong and pervasive and somewhat subtle strategy unfolding today among those who call themselves evangelical Christians. This is being masterminded by the archenemy Satan and sadly being bought into by many, many people in evangelical churches. This Subtle, strong strategy, basically. Is an attack on the sufficiency of the Word of God.
Now, in all times and seasons, the Word of God is under attack. And we have to be somewhat careful and somewhat wary and somewhat watchful. to discern how it's being attacked. I believe presently the attack on Scripture is primarily coming from those who deny its sufficiency for all matters of faith and conduct. One of the great statements Of theology, of traditional evangelical theology is that the scripture is adequate for all matters of faith and conduct.
That is being attacked today. Let me briefly describe what I mean by that with some illustrations from various. Angles. First of all, There has grown to be among church leaders a great preoccupation with what I would call worldly management technique. With all of the books being written on successful corporations and successful styles of management and leadership and so forth.
The church has perked up its ears and gone after that Really, as if it were the very life of the church. There are many who bow, as it were, to the gods of worldly management technique. Churches are learning those kinds of methods as if they were the keys to building the kingdom of God. And in a very subtle way, this is an attack on the adequacy of Scripture. As if to say Knowing the word of God and understanding its principles and the principles taught therein related to the growth of the church is not adequate.
And we must go to the management techniques and the systems of success the world uses in its corporate environment and transfer those to the church if we want the church to really grow and develop. I believe this is a subtle attack on the sufficiency of the revelation of God for the matter of the growth and development of the church. Secondly, another angle that I've been recently concerned about is That there are many people who feel the scripture is not a sufficient diet for the saints of the church. And there must be along with it a certain amount of entertainment. And churches are spending a lot of money to entertain people, and it is.
In a sense, A concession to those people who do not believe that the teaching and the study and the learning and the application of the Word of God is an exciting enough diet. In fact, there are many people who seem rather bored with the things of God revealed in Scripture and are really in desperate need of some entertainment. And there is in that, I believe, an attack on the sufficiency of the Word of God to bring to the life of believers all that is needed, not only for the matter of spiritual battle, but for the matter of joy and fulfillment in life. Another area of great distress to me is the area of, I suppose, what we could call mysticism or the occult. I believe if you look closely at evangelicalism today, you will find in many places people becoming preoccupied with the occult.
They don't think that's what it is, but in fact, that is indeed what it is. They are reaching into the world of mediums and demon spirits and the devil himself. Because they are searching for supernatural power, supernatural experience, ecstatic experiences, they are searching for miracles and signs and wonders. There are schools now teaching courses in signs and wonders. There are people saying that we can never reach the world with the gospel unless we can raise the dead and heal the sick and call down fire from heaven and do all kinds of supernatural things.
There are those who are today advocating Christian mantras, a chanting kind of thing. There are those offering formulas for confronting Satan, formulas for dealing with demons, positive confession and visualization techniques. Where you sort of visualize something as a reality, whether it's your healing, your new car, or the girl you want, a new house, or reaching a certain group for Christ, or developing a ministry, you get into this heavy kind of self-hypnotic visualization technique. These kinds of things are all forms of occult magic. They are being practiced to gain supposed divine power, but the power they gain is the power of the enemy.
In fact, this could be called the new religious science. We have now developed. an evangelical science of the mind. Many of the people are getting into Eastern and Hindu thought, thinking they'll be able to capture the power of the Eastern world if they can get themselves into the paradigm of their kind of thinking. There's a preoccupation with this mysticism.
Psychic power is cultivated. People are claiming authority over the devil, authority over demons, authority over disease. They are going around in the name of some supposed psychic power, commanding not only Satan and his forces, but disease, sickness, negative circumstances and other things. Further, another category in which we see this kind of abandonment of the belief of biblical sufficiency is in the matter of. of marriage and family for one.
There was a time when we believed that the Bible gave us adequate insight into marriage and the family. That if we studied the word of God, we would be able to live life in the family to its fullest. That marriage could be all that God ever intended if lived by biblical principles. Families can be all that God ever intended if lived by biblical principles. But now there is a proliferation of tricks and gimmicks and sex techniques and just a plethora of things that are added to the scripture to try to deal with family problems.
And in an underlying and subtle way, they are making the comment that the Bible is to one degree or another insufficient or inadequate. It used to be that we could accept what the Bible said in sociological areas, whether it's homosexuality or the role of a woman.
Now we're hearing that the Bible is rather unsophisticated and cannot comment on these contemporary sociological issues because of its lack of sophistication. And so there is an insufficiency in the Bible's ability to deal with contemporary sociological phenomena. This is coming on a wholesale level into the church, particularly marked in the area in the liberal church, homosexuality in the more evangelical church and the redefining of the role of women away from the traditional biblical teaching. But perhaps As dominant or more dominant than any of these themes is this area of psychology. Churches that once and for always would hire pastors and evangelists and teachers are now hiring psychologists.
Pastors that once would go to seminary and learn the Word of God or Bible college and master the scripture are now going to schools of psychology. to study human wisdom in dealing with the problems of mankind. This again is a subtle way of saying the Bible is insufficient. When coming to grips with these deep-seated emotional anxieties of men, we cannot expect the Bible to speak in any sophisticated way to those problems. Seminaries are changing their curriculum dramatically.
For the first time in the history of the church, seminaries are hiring psychologists on their staff to teach, psychiatrists to teach. They're teaching psychology. They're adding more psychology courses in many places, diminishing the biblical content of their curriculum. Colleges are doing the same thing. Churches are doing it.
It's a wholesale exodus. And to this sort of encroaching mysticism and preoccupation with supernatural powers and science of the mind and visualization techniques and hypnosis and all of this self-image stuff comes this psychology, and together it is creating the new God of the church. The world has been saying the Bible cannot help, and now, sad to say, the church is chiming in and agreeing that the Bible is inadequate to deal with psychological problems. In fact, I would go so far as to say there are many advocating today a psychological salvation in place of the new birth. There is nothing in this more than a pseudo-evangelical humanism.
This preoccupation with self-esteem and self-love and self-fulfillment and self-actualization that psychology has brought into the church. knows no biblical counterpart. And the sad thing about that is that the church has bought into that as if it is the savior of man. Nobel Prize winner Richard Freman said: Psychoanalysis is not a science. What did he mean by that?
He meant that there are no rules to guide it, it's a whole lot of human opinion. New York University professor Paul Veetz. criticized Christianity. And he criticized the Christian church for its tendency to do what he called buying high and selling low in regard to social science. He said the church is eager to adopt popular trends of thought at the very time the secular professionals are beginning to criticize them.
In fact, he put it this way. It is a matter of of climbing on the bandwagon just about the time it's slowing down. End quote. We tend to do that. To jump into movements that are just about dead because they've proven a washout even to the people in the world who started them.
But here we have in our contemporary Christian church these things making tremendous inroads. I am absolutely amazed at the inroads of mysticism, science of the mind, occultism, psychology, and these other things into the church, the college, the seminary environment. And the poo-pooing of biblical theology and biblical sufficiency.
Now all of this, I believe, is not some small problem. I believe it is a serious and sinful view of the Word of God. I believe it is the sin of the church to believe the Bible to be inadequate. J.I. Packer and his Little book on the word of God puts his finger on the problem in a paragraph that says this.
Quote: Certainty about the great issues of Christian faith and conduct is lacking all along the line. The outside observer sees us as staggering on from a gimmick to gimmick and stunt to stunt like so many drunks in a fog, not knowing at all where we are or which way we should be going. Preaching is hazy. Heads are muddled, hearts fret, doubts drain strength, uncertainty paralyzes action. Unlike the first century Christians who in three centuries won the Roman world and those later Christians who pioneered the Reformation and the Puritan awakening and the evangelical revival and the great missionary movement of the last century, we lack certainty.
End quote. And the reason we lack certainty is because we have a sinful view of Scripture. We do not any longer seem to believe that the Bible is sufficient for the life and conduct of the church. That is a sin. A sin of monstrous proportions.
to deny the sufficiency of the Word of God.
Now, how can we answer this? Can we go to the Bible and find in it that which is sufficient for all of life and conduct? The answer, I believe, is a resounding yes. And the proof is the testimony of the greatest authority in the universe, none other than God himself.
Now, a good starting place to give us a sort of a general feeling of what we want to get into would be in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. And I want to mention one verse to you and quote it, and then I want to comment on it. 2 Corinthians 3, 5. 2 Corinthians 3.5. Listen to what it says.
Very short, so listen carefully. Our sufficiency is from God. Did you hear that? Our sufficiency is from God. Now, we could preach off of just that statement at great length.
Our sufficiency is not from men. Our sufficiency is not from human wisdom. Our sufficiency is not from human resources. Our sufficiency is from God. Our sufficiency, what does that mean?
That means our capability of living life in God's plan to the maximum is from Him. In other words, we, because we are Christians, live in an environment in which the resources for life are divine.
Okay? They're divine. We live at a sphere, at a strata, at a level which human wisdom does not feed. for which human wisdom cannot provide. Resources.
Now, I want you to understand that I am not saying that there's nothing outside the Bible that has any value. There are many things that have value. God's common grace, that is the grace of God on all men, will create certain things in our human environment that are very helpful. But when it comes to the matters of spiritual life, all we need to know is revealed in the word of the living God and ministered to us by the Spirit through that word. And outside the Word of God, we do not have to look for a sufficiency that is not provided in the Scripture.
That is the sin. It is not to say that there's nothing in the world that isn't helpful. There are many helpful things in the world, but those matters which have to do with spiritual life and conduct and ministry are in the word of the living God and they are sufficient. They are sufficient. Our sufficiency as believers is from God.
So we don't say, well, this is a problem that we can't handle. Oh, this is boy, you've got a spiritual problem the Bible doesn't deal with. You better find some power source out there. You better get into sort of actualization or visualization or psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. Or boy, we just can't handle this one.
If it is a spiritual issue, if it has to do with the life of a believer, if it has to do with the life of the church, if it has to do with the soul of man, the struggles of man, those things that are in his life that bring difficulty, the Bible can deal with those things and does. It is sufficient. Another verse in 2 Corinthians is in chapter 9. In fact, it's parts of two verses, verses 8 and 10. 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, Now listen to this, just listen to what I say carefully, and I want you to mark in your mind the superlatives, the superlatives.
In fact, why don't you open your Bible to 2 Corinthians 9:8 so you can underline them? Watch the superlatives here. 2 Corinthians 9.8. And God And there again is our sufficiency. God is our sufficiency.
He is our source. God is able. There are no limits on his ability. To make all grace.
Now, there's the first superlative: all grace, not just some grace, not just most grace, but all grace. He is able to make all grace. Abound. There's another superlative, another word that speaks of a superlative indulgence. He is able to make all grace abound toward you.
That you, here's another superlative, always, not sometimes, not most of the time, but all the time. Will have all sufficiency. There's another superlative. We'll have all sufficiency, not in some things, a few things, or most things, but in what? In all things, I mean, it's an absolutely amazing statement.
And anybody who goes around saying, well, you know, the simple gospel just isn't enough. The word of God isn't enough. I've got to have this and this philosophy and this human wisdom and this approach. Doesn't understand that that is a sin against the claim of God Himself. To be able to make all grace abound toward you, so that you always have all sufficiency in all things.
And again, you will abound, another superlative, and here comes another one, to every good work or to all good works. Absolutely unlimited superlatives. And then verse 10 adds, being enriched in all things or in everything, to, here it comes again, all bountifulness which causes us. Thanksgiving to God causes us to give thanksgiving to God. The superlatives here are staggering.
Absolutely staggering.
Now, when somebody comes along and says the Bible is just not sufficient, boy, this is an issue the scripture can't deal with. While the scripture can't go into that culture, boy, we've got to have some kind of supernatural power. Boy, the scripture is not adequate. Or when somebody says, well, we just don't have the answers in Christianity for those deeper kind of problems, we fly in the face of the testimony of God in this very passage itself. Our God is able.
To provide the resources for all our needs, our sufficiency then begins with God, and God is sufficient.
Now, let's widen our understanding of that basic idea that God is sufficient and that our resources have to come from Him. I believe that the resources God gives to us come through the Spirit of God and the Word of God. And the focus particularly today is on the Word of God. And let's listen to some of the testimony of Scripture. As we consider this thought.
First of all, and just listen carefully and jot down the scriptures so you can refer to them. When Jesus spoke of of the total sanctification of a believer. That is the full holiness of a believer. The full separation from sin. He said this.
to his father in John 17, 17. Sanctify them by thy truth.
Now the word sanctify means set apart from sin, holy. Separated unto God. It has the idea of Spiritual perfection. Spiritual completion. That which we should be in Christ.
Coming to fulfillment. And he says, Oh God. Make them pure, make them holy, set them apart from sin unto yourself, and do it by your truth. Then he says in the same verse: Thy word is truth. We conclude then very obviously That the full holiness of the believer is the work of the Word of God.
It is the work of the Word of God. It is not the word of God plus something else. That's cultic. That's what the cults have been saying for years. You need the word of God, plus, Mary Baker Eddie.
And the science and health, and key to the scriptures. You need the word of God plus the visions of Joseph Smith and the writings of Brigham Young, etc., etc. You need the Bible plus the writings of this person or that person. You need the Bible plus human wisdom and philosophy. It's an age-old kind of thing striking a blow at the sufficiency of Scripture.
Jesus said Make them perfect and pure. By your truth, your word is truth. Your word is truth. The full holiness of the believer. is the work of the Word of God.
When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, We looked earlier at the second letter. The first letter also has a very important chapter along this theme, and it's chapter two. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, He wrote to them that the Spirit of God revealed the teaching of God to them. And he described it this way in 1 Corinthians 2, 13. He said, the teaching of God that comes to us by the Holy Spirit.
comes listen Quote, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches. But which the Holy Spirit teaches. Marvelous. The wisdom of God comes to us not through human sources. Our sufficiency is of God.
God dispenses his wisdom to us by the Spirit of God, revealing his teaching in the word of God, and it is the wisdom not in the words which man teaches, but Which the Holy Spirit teaches. In fact, It is so comprehensive. It is so effective. It is so complete, he says in verse 15, That by that word of God through the Holy Spirit, we can judge or appraise and evaluate. All things.
Tremendously comprehensive statement. We can judge and appraise and evaluate and understand and comprehend everything. Based upon the knowledge of the word of God. For, he says, The scripture, the revealed word of God in verse 16, marvelous statement, gives us, listen to this, the mind of Christ. Did you get that?
The mind of Christ.
Now, is there any insufficiency in the mind of Christ? Is Christ limited? He knows a few things, but he's also learning from some people. Not hardly. The mind of Christ is the consummate mind of God.
The mind of Christ is omniscient. The mind of Christ is supreme. The mind of Christ knows no insufficiency. Paul says, we have a word from God, a word not in the way that man teaches, but taught by the Spirit of God. That word from God allows us to judge, evaluate, appraise, understand, comprehend, and reason all things.
Why? Because it brings to us the mind of Christ. And listen to me, beloved, the mind of Christ is a sufficient mind. Can there be more sufficiency than the mind of Christ? No, there cannot be.
All we need to understand is the mind of God about any problem, about any need, about any issue. All we need to understand is how does God see it, how does God think about it, what does God say about it, and that suffices us. In Mark chapter 12 and verse 24, Jesus affirmed a very important thing. In a sort of a backhanded way, Jesus said that to know the scripture is to experience, here's the quote, the power of God. Jesus was saying to know the scripture.
It is to experience the power of God.
Now listen. People say they want power. They say we can't just give out the Bible. It doesn't have enough power. We got to do signs and wonders.
They say we can't just expect to live the Bible. We've got to have a certain supernatural power over demons, and power over the devil, and power over disease, and power over this, and we've got to be binding that, and binding this, and calling on this, and calling on that, and demanding this, and demanding that. and sort of with this kind of mind controlling our environment. But the scripture says. That To know the scripture.
is to experience the power of God. When Jesus went to deal with the devil. When the devil came to tempt Jesus. Up on the mare. And the devil tempted him.
What did he do? How did Jesus handle Satan? Did he say, I bind you? I condemn you, I send you to the pit. Did he give him some kind of formula like that?
How did he deal with the devil? It's very simple. He dealt with him on three different temptations, and in every case, he did what? He said, it is Britain. There's the formula.
The power of God Was expressed in the Word of God, and when those temptations were over, the Bible says the devil left him and the angels came. And ministered. The power is not in some mystical mind control. The power is in the Word of God. When you speak the Word of God, When you live by the Word of God, when you believe the Word of God, there is sufficiency there.
The power of God to deal with any need comes from the Word of God energized in the believer by the Holy Spirit. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current study, The Sufficiency of Scripture, is one of his most popular from decades of his pulpit ministry. And friend, speaking of Scripture's sufficiency, I'd like to remind you about a resource that can help you dig into God's Word like never before and apply its truth to every situation you may face. It's our flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible.
Order your copy when you contact us today. Call us at 8005 GRACE or visit our website gty.org. The MacArthur Study Bible has about 25,000 footnotes that explain Scripture's meaning. It also includes a section that shows you how to get the most out of your time studying God's Word. The Study Bible is available in several English and non-English translations with softcover, hardcover, and leather options.
To order, call 8005 GRACE or go to gty.org. And would you do us a favor? Let us know how grace to you has helped you to grow spiritually. And if God has used John's teaching to bring someone you know to faith in Christ. We'd love to hear about that as well.
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Now for the entire Grace to U staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today, and be here for John MacArthur's lesson tomorrow. you'll see why God's Word is sufficient to guide you through life's toughest trials. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time. on Grace to You.
