The sermon grounds the Bible’s authority, truthfulness, and perfection in God’s authorship and the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of its human writers. Scripture is presented as sufficient to disclose the great realities of ruin, redemption through Christ’s blood, regeneration, heaven, and judgment. Because the Bible is God’s merciful letter and eternal guide, neglecting it is treated as a serious act of rebellion. Hearers are therefore urged to read, search, reverence, and submit to its message, particularly its call to salvation in Christ.
Theological center: Scripture is divinely inspired, truthful, authoritative, and sufficient because God is its ultimate Author, and it reveals salvation through Christ.
Applications: Read the Bible regularly · Search Scripture deeply · Receive Christ for salvation · Recognize Scripture’s authority
Primary texts: Hosea 8:12 · Mark 16:16 · 1 Peter 1:19
“I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing.” Hosea 8:12 THIS is God’s complaint against Ephraim. It is no mean proof of His goodness, that He stoops to rebuke His erring creatures. It is a great argument of His gracious disposition that He bows His head to notice terrestrial affairs. He might, if He pleased, wrap Himself with night as with a garment. He might put the stars around His wrist for bracelets and bind the suns around His brow for a coronet. He might dwell alone, far, far above this world, up in the seventh heaven, and look down with calm and silent indifference upon all the doings of His creatures. He might do as the heathens supposed their Jove did, sit in perpetual silence, sometimes nodding his awful head to make the Fates mov…