Lord's Day: December 7, 2025  Preacher: Carlos Montijo  Series: It Is Written: Scripture Alone  Topic: Means of Grace  Scripture: Matthew 4:1–11; Genesis 3:1–5; Acts 17:23–31; 1 Corinthians 14:33; Matthew 16:17; Revelation 2:4–5

1Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. 3And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” 4But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:1–4

• Our first principle is powerfully illustrated and practiced by our Lord and Master, when facing the enemy of all good, in the Wilderness Temptation of Christ.
• Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines destiny: “a predetermined course of events often held to be an irresistible power or agency”

I.  The devil tempts us both to question the final authority of God’s Word—“Hath God really said?”—and to depend on other authorities that contradict God.

• He uses religious antichrists which the Apostles repeatedly warned against,[1] who claim to speak authoritatively for God, claim to be equal to or above Scripture.
• Normative authority is authority that has the power to bind consciences, to direct us to what we ought to do, to command us.
• 1689 Baptist Confession, 1.10: “The supreme judge by which all religious controversies are to be settled, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and individual thinkers (private spirits) are to be examined, can be none other than the Holy Scriptures delivered by the Spirit. In the verdict of Scripture our faith is finally determined.”

II. We trust God alone, and the means He has revealed to us.

• Scripture and reason are not two first principles, but one: “God and logic are one and the same first principle, for John wrote that the [Logos] Logic was God.”[2]

III. How do you settle competing interpretations of Scripture?

• God cannot contradict Himself, Scripture cannot contradict itself, they are logically consistent with all the propositions and doctrine of Scripture, “for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints” (1 Cor. 14:33).
• Confessing Protestants affirm other normative authorities for believers and the church (creeds, confessions, catechisms, elders, pastors, church discipline, church councils, etc.)—but Scripture is supreme over all.

IV. God’s instituted system of checks and balances

• Believers must “judge for ourselves” whether a church is true or false, whether a teaching is sound or not, by examining it logically with the Scriptures, and by using the historic, faithful, and living church that is most consistent with Scripture, to guide our understanding and application of Scripture.

V.  Even “the purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error” (LBCF 26.3).

• Churches can start out as true, faithful churches, but, if they do not stay the course, and persistently, sinfully deviate from Scripture, God will remove His lampstand from it (Revelation 2:4-5).

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: [email protected]

Scripture quotations marked LSB are from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

[1] See Carlos E. Montijo, “Those Who Went Out Were Never In”: Apostolic Admonitions Against Antichrist | 1 John 2:18-19, First John (ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church, 2024) [accessed 17 December 2025]. See also sermons on the End Times, https://www.thorncrowncovenant.church/sermons/topic/end-times.

[2] Gordon H. Clark, ‘God and Logic’, The Trinity Review, December 1980 [accessed 7 July 2024].