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you Turn to Psalm 45 so we can 
sing more. Sending chills up and down my 
spine. Do I have to turn something on? Is my voice being amplified? 
That's what I thought. I was assigned a two-fold topic, 
both from chapter one of our confession in 1-5. It's in the 
Westminster, it's in the Savoy, it's in the Second London. This 
little phrase right in the middle of Paragraph five of chapter 
one, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to 
God. The scope of the whole scripture 
is to give all glory to God. Two questions, what does scope 
mean? And secondly, how does the scripture go about bringing 
glory to God. And I'll try to answer those. 
And the second one is in chapter one, paragraph nine, the infallible 
rule of interpretation of scripture is scripture itself. So those 
are the two portions of the confession in chapter one I'll be focusing 
on in both, actually all three of my lectures. Now, fundamentally, 
my lectures can be reduced to three points. Okay, so if you 
get these, I've done my job right. If you don't, you have intellectual 
problems. The first is Christ is the scope 
of scripture. I'm gonna try to prove that to 
you from both documents around the era of the 17th century era 
that when they drilled down to answering the question, the scope 
of the whole, which is to give all glory of God. How does it 
go about doing that? By presenting the mediator to 
us. And then the second point is this. Second fundamental point 
that I'd like to get across to you. Number one, Christ is the 
scope of scripture. I'll define those terms, by the 
way. The second is this. When scripture 
interprets scripture, We have the Word of God on the Word of 
God, and therefore, an infallible interpretation of the Word of 
God in the Word of God. Or like I tell my people at my 
church, when you have the Word of God on the Word of God, you 
have the Word of God on the Word of God. And when you have the 
Word of God on the Word of God, you have the Word of God on the Word of 
God. And therefore, an infallible interpretation of scripture. 
Not a new interpretation of an old text, not a new meaning, 
you know, placed over an old text, but the meaning God intended 
all along is brought out by scripture at various points. And the third, 
the third point that if you get, I've done my job, is this. Now 
this is an interesting one. Students and others of you might 
have heard this before. I was going to do a lecture, 
a series of lectures in Bakersfield, California on, I don't even know 
what it was, But I had this statement that I'm gonna, this is the third 
point of the introduction that if you get this third one as 
well, you'll understand everything I'm saying. And I've done my 
job. I tweeted it. Subsequent revelation 
often makes explicit what is implicit in antecedent revelation. 
A friend of mine text me from Bakersfield, Pastor, don't say 
that at the conference. I said, I'm going to say it. 
I'm going to explain it. And then afterwards, people, 
they're going to get it, and they're going to come up to me 
and say, I got it. That's really helpful. Subsequent 
revelation, if we put the timeline of the Bible, Genesis, through 
revelation this way. Revelation over here often makes 
explicit what was implicit in earlier portions. Subsequent 
revelation often makes explicit what is implicit in antecedent 
revelation. Who was the first created son 
of God in the image of God? Adam. How do we know that? Luke 
3.38 is the first time Adam's called a son of God. Does Adam 
become the first son of God when Luke's ink dries? Or was he already 
a son of God by virtue of his created status? He was already 
that. So subsequent revelation makes explicit the sonship of 
Adam, teasing out the implications, the entailments of antecedent, 
beforehand revelation. So Christ is a scope of scripture. When scripture interprets scripture, 
you have the word of God on the word of God, and therefore an 
infallible interpretation of scripture. And subsequent revelation 
often makes explicit what is implicit in antecedent revelation. 
I have to go a little faster for various reasons during my 
session. There will be a quiz afterwards. Now in my lectures on hermeneutics, 
I open up the, I think it's the first session, with what I call 
cardinal or foundational pillars of biblical interpretation. cardinal 
or foundational pillars of biblical interpretation. I just asked 
three questions at the outset. What is scripture? And the answer 
is, after reading the Bible, and somebody asked me that question, 
if you said the written word of God, that would be the correct 
answer. Okay, so it's not. a mere book written by men, though 
men wrote it, it's ultimately the written word of God. Why is scripture, if you read 
through scripture, and keep reading, by the way, over and over and 
over, The question of why is, why is scripture, we have to 
say something like this, scripture exists because God willed to 
give us the knowledge necessary to clean us up and bring us into 
a safe presence in the eschatological state of glory. And then the 
third question is how, how does scripture go about revealing 
that information to us? So what is scripture? Scripture 
is ontology, it's isness. What is it? The written word 
of God. Why is scripture? That's its 
teleology, right? It's telos, the end to which 
it's heading. It's going in this direction. 
It's gonna give the information necessary to get us back into 
the safe presence of God all cleaned up. And then the third 
question is the how question. How does scripture go about doing 
this? What is its form? What is the way it's put together? What's its rhetorical texture 
or something like that? And I have an answer here, I'm 
gonna read it. Here's my brief answer. which is gonna be further 
developed in my three lectures. Scripture being the word of God 
written in order to bring sinners back to God, narrates for us 
various acts of God, operations, things God produces, which, excuse 
me, the climactic act of God being the incarnation, sufferings, 
and glory of Christ. That's why Christ is the scope 
of scripture, we'll get there in a minute, and interprets and 
applies the entailments of those acts, which includes revelatory 
words given to prophets and apostles, not just divine acts, but words 
as well. You know the cycle, God acts, 
creation, judgment at the fall, promise of the skull-crushing 
redeemer in Genesis 3.15, then God raises up a penman, Moses, to 
both narrate the acts and sometimes draw theological implications 
of the acts. By the way, when God acts, his 
acts are often pregnant with meaning. I think you know that. 
They're full of meaning. But the first narration of the 
act doesn't explicate, doesn't explain all the meaning entailed 
in the act itself. You've experienced that yourself. 
You read the first part of the Bible. We already did it with 
Luke 3.38. Then you have an aha moment once you get to Luke 3.38. 
Oh, Adam was the first created son of God, at least the first 
earthly created son of God. Were angels sons of God at their 
creation? That's for somebody else to tell you. But you didn't 
get the information until over here, right? So the Bible goes 
about telling us that it's the word of God, that it exists to 
bring sinners into the safe presence of God, and that it does that 
by virtue of the information conveyed to us, culminating, 
terminating, finding its crescendo in the incarnation, sufferings, 
and glory of Christ. And we'll see Jesus reduce the 
Old Testament to sufferings and glory of Christ. He does it, 
guess who else does it? The apostles, but not until Pentecost. You know how you read the gospels 
and sometimes Peter says glorious things and then he puts his foot 
in his mouth? He doesn't put his foot in his mouth, at least 
in the records that we have after Pentecost. He sounds like Jesus. So it does this. through revealing 
the pinnacle, the apex, or the summit of scripture's revelatory 
words, which are to be found in its sections where it announces 
and explains the incarnation to come, the incarnation that 
came, and the entailments or the implications of the sufferings 
and glory of Christ for the people of God this side of his entrance 
into glory. I just gave a survey of the entire 
Bible, right there, there it is. So if everybody understands 
that Christ is the scope of scripture, number one, and when you have 
the scripture interpreting scripture, you have the word of God and 
the word of God, therefore an infallible interpretation, and third, subsequent 
revelation often makes explicit what is antecedent. What is implicit 
in antecedent revelation, I can save a lot of time and close 
the lecture and we can go eat some more food. Or I can go on 
and give you your money's worth, I guess. So we have Bibles basically 
because God brought it into existence to give us the necessary information 
to be believed in order to be brought back to God safely and 
all cleaned up from our guilt and sins and righteous as well. And the core, the scopus, I'll 
define it later, of the information, of that information, That brings 
us back to God. Is the Son of God for us and 
for our salvation? Everything in scripture prior 
to the incarnation, sufferings and glory of our Lord sets up 
the world for the incarnation, sufferings and glory of our Lord. 
Everything after the historical incarnation Sufferings and glory 
of our Lord announces to us that the grandest event of events 
has occurred. The gospels do that for us. In 
accordance with the scriptures of the Old Testament. You realize 
when Jesus comes on the scene, he doesn't say, the Old Testament 
is shooting in a different direction than me. It's going over my head 
to the future. So I got a new plan for things. That's not how he reads. If you 
believed Moses, you'd believe me, for he wrote about me, right? This, the incarnate son of God, 
in his sufferings and glory, is what? A new thing? Or is that 
which Moses and the law and the prophets said would take place? 
So Jesus interprets himself in light of the extent, then present, 
text of the Old Testament and its original divine intended 
meaning. He doesn't put new interpretations 
on old text. Watch me pull a hermeneutical 
rabbit out of my hat. What's the next line? That trick 
never works. Or, you know, he pulls a lion 
out. Now here's something we hope 
you really like. You have to be old to understand what those 
are. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Jesus didn't 
pull lions out of, you know, scarves out of a hat. He didn't 
do tricks with the Old Testament. He basically said, I am that 
to which the entire thing pointed. And the way he understood himself 
in relation to the Old Testament is the same way the apostles 
did, and it has created what we call Christianity. And it's 
one of the reasons why we're here today is the way Jesus interpreted 
himself in light of the extant scriptures of the Old Testament. 
Every Lord's Day, by the way, is a reminder that the apostles 
interpreted the Old Testament and sufferings and the entrance 
into glory of the Lord Jesus in such a unique way as the foundation 
of a new creation that the day of worship for the people Every 
Lord's Day, there's like a reverberation of the first day of resurrection 
by our Lord all over the world. And all that's dependent upon 
how Jesus saw himself in relation to the Old Testament in terms 
of this twofold motif, sufferings and glory. I am, if I ever get 
back to the notes, here to tell you that you can reduce the Old 
Testament to those two motifs. Now, there's other things going 
on in the Old Testament. and hopefully someday we'll get 
there. So let's just go skipping five 
pages of that. You know how painful it is to 
fly to Boston and then back over here and then skip pages? It's 
really painful. But I do want to be faithful 
to get to that language of scope. So in our day, we use language 
like Christ-centered or Christocentric. But what do they mean? The older 
way of encapsulating the concepts embodying those terms is scope, 
scopus scripturae, the scope of the scriptures, the target 
or end to which all of the Bible tends is encapsulated by that 
Latin phrase, scopus scripturae. Now this concept gained confessional 
status in the Westminster Confession of Faith. It actually predates 
it, and I'm gonna read from the pre-17th century document. The Savoy Declaration in 2nd 
London. The scope of the whole which is to give all glory to 
God. Now Reformation and post-Reformation 
reformed theologians understood scope in two senses. It had a narrow sense the scope, 
the target of a section, a passage, or it had this wider sense, in 
one sense, the target of the whole. the bullseye to which 
the whole serves or aims. And I can illustrate this. If 
I had a board and I put a black dot on there, what would you 
say is up there? You'd say a black dot. But if I put a circle around 
the black dot and I painted it yellow, you might say, well, 
there's a black dot accentuated by another circle, by a circle 
that's painted yellow. And then I put another broader 
circle, and I painted it red. You'd say, it's starting to look 
like a target. And then I did three or four of those. You'd 
go, oh, that is a target. And the center is called the 
bullseye. And I asked you questions about this target. I said, if 
you didn't have the other circles, would you identify the bullseye 
by itself as a target? No. Would you agree with me that 
the, What do you call those circles? Concentric circles and the shaded 
colors are all serving to accentuate one thing. That is, The bullseye, 
right? That's why those things are there. 
Not just to identify itself as a target generically, but to 
serve, to function with your eyes, that's the thing I want 
to hit. That's kind of what scope in the sense I want to discuss, 
refer to. The goal of this lecture then 
is to identify and briefly discuss 
the Reformed concept of Christ as a scope of scripture, and 
then I'm gonna attempt to show you in the Bible itself that 
this way of understanding the scope of the whole, which is 
to give all glory to God, namely, the incarnation, sufferings, 
and glory of Christ is why we have a Bible. God's revealing 
to us the necessary information to take us to glory. I'm gonna 
show you that in scripture. But let's go back to 1536. Listen 
to this. This is the first Helvetic confession. The position of this entire canonical 
scripture or of the entire actual canonical scripture is this, 
that God is kind-hearted or shows kindness to the race of men and 
that he has proclaimed and demonstrated this kindness or goodwill through 
Christ, his son. So that's a big mouthful and 
then through what? through Christ his son. Here 
Christ is confessed as the revelation of God's kindness to man. This 
is the position of the entire canonical scripture. That's a 
very interesting statement. Why would they say this is the 
position of the entire canonical scripture? I think they got that 
from the Bible, I hope to show you. William Ames in 1629, the 
Old and New Testaments are reduced to these two primary heads. The 
Old promises Christ to come and the New testifies that he has 
come. So the concept of Christ as the 
scope of scripture is clear in Ames, and it's clear in John 
Owen, and it's clear in a lot of other people. If you don't 
believe me, you can come up and read the quotes. Let me just 
read one of the Owen quotes here. This end, supremely and absolutely, 
the end of the epistle of Hebrews, is the glory of God. that God, 
who's the author of it, Hebrews. But the end of the scriptures 
is the glory of God in Christ as he hath revealed himself and 
gathered all things to a head in him unto the manifestation 
of his glory. So not only is the end of the 
book of Hebrews the scope of the book of Hebrews, the glory 
of God in and by Jesus Christ, but the end, the scope, I think 
he's using that word in a technical sense, but the end, the scope, 
The scope, the target, the bullseye of the entire scripture is the 
glory of God in Christ. You ever read John Owen on Genesis 
3.15, the promise of the skull crushing seat? Well, the curse 
upon the serpent, which ends up being both a curse upon serpent 
and blessings for mankind. Okay, judgment and mercy and 
one divine promise concerning the future. Owen says if that's 
not a messianic, presentation by God through the 
words of Moses, then the entirety of scripture makes absolutely 
no sense. I think he's right. By the way, 
sufferings and glory, I'm gonna make a big deal of that, because 
Jesus says it's all over the Old Testament canon. It's in 
Moses, the law of Moses, it's in the Psalms, it's in the writings, 
the prophets. Peter does the same thing. if 
we ever get there. Paul does the same thing. They 
reduce the Old Testament to a two-fold motif, and something that comes 
to fulfillment, actual historical fulfillment, dream, the incarnate 
state of our Lord, the state of humiliation. He suffers, and 
then he enters into glory. Where is the first place, Sufferings 
and Glory, in relation to the Messiah to come? Because we're 
talking about the Old Testament. Where's the first place in the 
Old Testament where Sufferings and Glory motif, with reference 
to the Messiah to come, is revealed? In the prophets? Because it's 
in the prophets. Isaiah 53, there's a lot of sufferings there, right? 
In the Psalms, there's a lot of kingship and suffering in 
the Psalms. I'd say, didn't first happen 
in the prophets, it didn't first happen in the Psalms, so then 
what do we have left? The law. So where's the first 
place in the law, the mosaic corpus, the body of? Moses' writings, 
the five books of the Pentateuch, the first five books. Where's 
the first place sufferings and glory occurs there? Well, the 
sacrificial system, there's a lot of suffering, typological of 
the sufferings of our Lord. Yeah, but I'd say, still wrong. 
Keep going back, right? Guess where I'm going with this. 
I already hear it. I'm giving a lecture. Somebody's 
given my answers already. This is my lecture. It's Genesis 
3.15. Say that or somebody say that. Right? The seed of the woman shall crush 
the head of the serpent. The serpent's gonna bruise the 
heel so that he's gonna get bruised, sufferings, and he's gonna crush, 
glory. I think that's where it is. I 
think that makes sense. Who was it? Sinclair Ferguson 
saying Genesis 3.16 through the book of Revelation is just kind 
of a footnote to Genesis. 1-1-3-3-15. I think he's right. So here we have somebody from 
the 16th century, Second Helvetic Compassion, William Ames, John 
Owen, they're all saying the same thing. There's this technical 
sense in which the end is the scope, the target, the goal, 
the bullseye is the incarnate son of God in his sufferings 
and glory, I'll try to argue. So they saw scripture as organic. This is all in chapter one of 
the confession, by the way. That is, it's all related. Why? 
Well, because all the human authors had this same subjective experience. They felt inspired. No, it's 
organic, it's all connected because it's the word of God written, 
okay? God, the divine author, all of 
the scripture related to itself. But progression, special revelatory 
document we call the written word of God, it was going. They also saw it as self-interpreting 
Sometimes you have the Word of God and the Word of God, and 
we have the Word of God. An infallible interpretation of the Word of 
God. And they also saw it consummated, terminating in, I would say, 
two things. The act promised, the act being 
sufferings and glory of the incarnate Son of God, and The act fulfilled, 
that is, explained the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. By the way, does 
God leave the biggest redemptive acts ever? for us to interpret 
on our own, or does he follow it with special revelation that 
not only narrates the act, the exodus for instance, and then 
draws out of the narrated act in subsequent scripture principles 
that are embedded in the act, but we wouldn't know unless God 
told us. Yeah, and if I get back to my 
notes, we might even get there, I could show you actually from 
the Bible that that's what happens. Let's just read a text. This 
is Luke 24 25 to 27 and 44 to 49. Then he said to them, O foolish 
ones, this is after the resurrection before the ascension into glory. 
Then he said to them, O foolish ones, how would you like to be 
called by the Lord? Hey, O foolish ones. And slow of heart to believe 
in all Ought not the Christ to have 
suffered these things and to enter into his glory. There's 
an oughtness about this. Where does this oughtness come 
from? The Old Testament, right? And 
beginning, ought not the Christ, yeah, to have suffered these 
things and watch this language and to enter into his glory. 
The answer is yes, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, 
he expounded to them and all the scriptures the things concerning 
himself. Now, when he says this, all that 
the prophets have spoken, if you want to, you can do a search. 
Don't do it now, it's rude. Do it later. If I see you looking 
down at your phone doing a search, I'm going, that's what I'm talking 
about, you rebels. If you do a search on that, the 
apostles speak that way about the Old Testament. All that the 
Lord has spoken through the prophets. But what they mean by it is their 
written product. Peter's gonna do it, somebody 
else does it too, in the New Testament. So he's talking about 
the written product of the prophets, right? He's not talking about 
the audible sermons they might have preached, but he's talking 
about the end product that's inspired, that is, the law, the 
prophets, and the writings, the Old Testament. And then verses, that's not, this is 44 to 49. Then he said 
to them, these are the words which I spoke to you while I 
was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which 
were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms 
concerning me. And he opened their understanding 
that they might comprehend the scriptures. Then he said to them, 
thus it is written, that's a fulfillment motif here. Thus it is written, 
something's promised and it must be fulfilled. And thus it was 
necessary, there's oughtness again, grounded in what? Wherever 
it was written. For the Christ to suffer, now 
watch what he does this time. and to rise from the dead on 
the third day. So sufferings and glory can be 
put in another way. Sufferings and rising from the 
dead on the third day. What did he do on the third day? 
According to his human nature, he entered into glory, or his 
rest. His work was completed, now he 
enters into his rest. Sufferings and glory. Sufferings and rising from the 
dead on the third day. And that repentance and remission 
of sins should be preached and is aimed to all nations beginning 
at Jerusalem. Stop. It's one thing to say that 
the Old Testament teaches of sufferings and glory of Christ. 
But now Jesus is telling us, oh, and here's what else is in 
the Old Testament. that repentance and remission of sins should 
be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. 
To the Jew first and to the Greek, Romans 1. Where did Paul get 
that from? Maybe Jesus, but certainly the 
Old Testament. There's the servant of the Lord. 
in Jerusalem, and there's a remnant of believing Jews around him, 
and the law of God goes out to the nations of the world basically 
from there. So Acts 1-8, it had to be that way, because that's 
what God planned according to The Old Testament. So note first 
in this Luke passage, well, and then he says, and you are my 
witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the promise of 
my father upon you. But tarry in the city of Jerusalem until 
you are endowed with power from on high. So there's a few things 
I want to note, but I will also note this. It's 4.10, I have 
no idea what I started, I forgot. So it's 4.10, good? Good, I can 
come back tomorrow and pick up right there or keep going for 
another hour. Five minutes is good, okay, just a couple observations 
on this text. It's very foundational because 
we're gonna see after Pentecost, Peter in his two sermons in Acts, 
we might not get to both of them, and Peter in 1 Peter 1, sounds 
a lot like Jesus. And then Paul in Acts 26 and 
the entire chapter of Acts 28 in my notes, it says just read 
Acts 28. But we're not gonna do that. 
And then Paul, in his written letters, seems to be reading 
the Old Testament the way Jesus did. What an amazing thought. Lordship 
hermeneutics. Interpret the Bible like Jesus. 
Now the apostles got the Old Testament wrong sometime. Somebody 
just shocked my leg. The apostles got the Old Testament 
wrong sometimes. Remember in the gospel accounts? Get behind me, Satan. When you 
go after Pentecost, what do we have in Peter? We have the same 
thing Jesus is saying about the Old Testament and the sufferings 
in Gloria motif in various ways. Peter is saying the same thing 
Jesus did. So I was trying to trick you a little, but they 
got the Old Testament wrong sometimes during the Lord's earthly ministry. 
We need to have mercy on them, by the way. We're this side of 
not only Pentecost, but we have God's own special commentary 
on the sufferings of glory of Christ as it relates to the Old 
Testament in the form of the New Testament. We're very privileged. So... This isn't the first time 
that Jesus taught his disciples his own view of his relation 
to the Old Testament. These are the words which I spoke 
to you while I was still with you. That's interesting. Our 
Lord indicates to us the relation between himself and the Old Testament. 
All things must be fulfilled which were written. That which 
was promised about him must be fulfilled by him, or we could 
put it this way, this, me, is that which was spoken beforehand 
by the prophets. Remember that one too. This is 
that, it's all over the New Testament once you see it. Jesus also, 
his view of himself in relation to the Old Testament was a broad 
canonical relation. In all things must be fulfilled 
which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and 
the Psalms. That's the well-known three-fold 
canon of the Old Testament, Hebrew Old Testament. Another thing 
is that which was written about Christ brings necessary entailments 
upon Christ and the disciples. Thus it is written and thus it 
was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the 
dead the third day. Why? Because God said this is 
what will take place. And that repentance and remission 
of sins over and over. Now they waited in Jerusalem 
They were endowed with a special endowment of the Spirit. The 
Spirit of Christ was given to the apostles of Christ upon the 
ascension of Christ in order to interpret the words of Christ 
infallibly and write it down. And that's what we have in the 
form of the New Testament. Now, there are other places we 
can go. I'm gonna stop there. I wanna thank you for your patience. I'll pray, and then we'll take 
a break. We thank you, Lord, for this 
opportunity to think about the scope of scripture. Thank you 
for our theological forebears that have gone before us and 
done a lot of the real work of the New Testament. of mining 
out of the scripture, massive truths, and reducing those massive 
truths to confessional statements that reduce large swaths of scriptural 
truth into just short, marvelous statements. The scope of the 
whole, which is to give all glory to God as one of them, and the 
infallible interpretation of the scriptures of the scripture 
itself as another. Help us to learn from these, 
And to ground all these, ultimately in your word, we ask your blessing 
in Jesus' name, amen.