Gooding, David: 4 - How Do We Know the Bible is God’s Word?

And once more, a very good evening to you. If confession is good for the soul, let me begin by making confession to you honestly this evening, that tonight's lecture will be perhaps more detailed than any other hitherto, and therefore somewhat more difficult to comprehend as it goes along. To make matters worse, through my own fault, my own grievous fault, I have no overhead projector films tonight that could have diverted your attention occasionally. Therefore, I am prepared in the indulgence of my heart to make certain concessions to you. I often used to have to attend lectures at the dead of the afternoon period in my professional life. Found it very difficult to keep my eyes open. I hit upon a scheme, and that was to listen with my eyes shut. The energy I saved by listening without trying to keep my eyes open increased the energy I had to listen, and therefore I shall be quite happy if you adopt that technique this evening. If you are afraid to listen with your eyes shut, just in case you should inadvertently fall off to sleep, then I think I can help you there as well, if you give your name into me now, when I see you going to sleep, I will call it out, and, uh, you will be saved from, uh, being so desperately disappointed. More than that I can scarcely do this evening, but we do come to study a topic that is at the very basis of our Christian faith and the basis of our Christian witness for the Lord in this world. And if it should strike you as overly technical, pray remember that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and our strength and our soul, but not only so. We are to love the Lord our God with every centimeter of intellect and brain power that he has given us. We are to love him with all our minds. So tonight we are to consider that basic belief that all scripture, both Old and New Testament, is the inspired word of God. And is the inspired word of God in this sense, that, to use a famous phrase, what scripture says, God says. Now, last night we were thinking of the authenticity of the New Testament documents, that they were genuine copies of originals that were written in the first century AD. And then we went further and said these writers who wrote the original documents claim to be more or less contemporary with our Lord and claim to be writing history. And we considered one or two of the tests that we could apply to them to establish whether, in fact, they were accurate historians. Then we came to the very central message of the New Testament itself, relating to the question, who is Jesus Christ of Nazareth? And we asked ourselves, was this Jesus Christ and the character that is represented in the New Testament an invention of the New Testament writers? Was he some ideal figure? And they built up their history of Jesus Christ representing the carpenter from Nazareth in these glowing terms, as though he were some ideal figure. And we found overwhelming evidence that that is not so. Jesus was no one's ideal, not even the ideal of the Jews, not even the ideal of his disciples when they knew him here on earth. So much so that when he refused to resist arrest and allowed himself to be crucified, all his disciples forsook him and fled. And when they went out to preach the gospel, then their central message was this, we preach Christ and him crucified, and they preached it in the face of the knowledge that they knew the world around, both Jew and Gentile, would find that message offensive. And they preached it nonetheless, and proved as they did so, that the message of a crucified and risen Christ, though offensive and folly and a scandal to men, proves in actual practice to be the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. Having got that far, I want now, as I say, to think with you tonight on scripture. Not only does it present the Lord Jesus to us as Son of God, and we have evidence indeed that he is as he claimed to be. We are to think tonight of the claim that every scripture, both old and new, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. That has been the traditional belief of Christians and the Christian church all down the centuries. Unitedly they stood on it for sixteen hundred years or more, until the days of the enlightenment came, and the temperature and atmosphere began to change. Instead of submitting the mind to Holy Scripture, men began to argue that their proper approach was for men to be skeptical about Scripture and believe nothing until, by the use of their critical faculty, they could prove scripture true. And therefore, man began to sit in judgment on scripture, not merely to study it rigorously and use the power of the mind to try to understand it with the help of God, that we are called upon to do. Belief in the inspiration of scripture does not mean that we don't have to study. It is the very reverse. If we believe that the w- scripture is the word of God, then it implies that we ought to study it with every piece of ounce of energy and intelligence that God may give to us, precisely because it is God's word. Now, from the enlightenment onward, a rationalistic attitude began to prevail, particularly in our Bible college, in, in our universities, and more recently has it spread to many a Bible college, in which men come not in the attitude of faith, they come in the attitude of skepticism, prepared not to believe, unwilling to believe until they're critical, uh, skepticism is satisfied, and the result has been devastating in Christendom. To put it succinctly, Leslie Newbigin, himself, I'm afraid, a liberal, but with great estimate of the word of God, put it this way to his intellectual colleagues. Says he, in our private bedrooms or study, in our devotion, we approach scripture in faith and on our knees. When we come to our academic of scripture, study of scripture, we approach it not in faith, but in doubt and in skepticism. It's like looking at the thing through, uh, double perspective glasses, and it blurs the vision. So it does indeed. I had a Romanian staying with me for three parts of three university terms just, uh, two years ago. He was one of a number of younger men in Romania who are tired of listening to sermons just on one little verse of scripture. They, uh, have come to love the exposition of the Word of God as it is written in whole books, do you see? And in the many, uh, assemblies and churches where they follow this method, let me tell you what they do. The Sunday morning is a three-hour period when the whole church meets. The first hour is spent in the worship of the Lord. The second hour is spent in the controlled discussion as the elders and teachers in the church have a discussion in full view of all the members of the assembly, and they discuss the meaning of a passage in the book. And the third hour is spent when some preacher or teacher or other expounds that passage of scripture. You'll see they mean business in that Romanian church, and there are many churches like it. And then, in case there are others, some who, uh, like to take it a bit further, on Monday night they have another three-hour period to expound and study the scripture, and they get one or two thousand to it, you see, because the place is a university city, and people want to know. And as they study Holy Scripture, they tell me that unconverted people go- come in, hard-boiled atheists, commoners come in, and they get caught by Scripture. They have been brought up to believe that Scripture is a lot of old fables and legends with nothing to say except silly stories for children. And they discover all of a sudden that the Bible is speaking. Unbeknownst to them, what they're discovering is that this is the word of the living God, and it is the living God who is speaking to them in scripture and dealing with their problems and talking sense and talking stuff that's relevant to their day and generation. And they come, and they come, and they come again, and they get converted. Would God here in the West, we had a belief in the inspiration of Holy Scripture like those Romanians do. I can tell you where that young man and several others got their first taste of scripture. It was because certain dear men of God, convinced of the value of the word of God, in the bad old days when it was dangerous in Romania, they used to get themselves across the border by one means and another. They would go along to various assemblies and ask the elders, have you anybody here that could profit from rigorous systematic study of scripture? And quietly and secretly, men would be chosen out, and they would go off in secret, sometimes in the depths of the winter, up to the tops of the mountains, in the remote forests where no one would know they were there, not even the forest rangers. And with deep snow upon the ground, they would live in. They wouldn't be allowed to know the names of the men who were visiting them from the west to teach them the word of God, in case they got caught, and they could be tortured in con- confessing who the men's names were. And there, in those conditions, they sought God and studied his word. Have you any wonder that they've come to love it and proved it to be the word of the living God, and now seek to study it, uh, with all their might and main, and lead the assemblies and churches into a similar study? I think it is sometimes a pity, and it certainly shocks the Romanians when they come to our assemblies and find a mere uh twenty five minutes apportioned to the preaching of the word, and people complaining if the word goes on any longer. They open their eyes and mouth in astonishment. This good man of whom I speak was advised by some of his fellow Romanians that he ought to get a university degree in theology because it would help him in his relations with the government nowadays in Romania. Against his will, he came and took a degree through a certain Bible college, uh, and uh, the degree was a gr- degree from my own university, from the department of, of theology, of which I am not a member. He thought in his innocence to come to a Western Bible college. This would be marvelous. A whole year to study the Bible, said he to himself. Marvelous. With what disappointment did he discover that the course through the Bible College was not study the Bible, only a little bit. It was the rigorous study of all the rationalistic theories that have been propounded since the begi- the middle of the last century. Granted, he was given the answers to all the rationalism in them, or some attempted answer, but he had to know it off by heart. He had to read so much of that stuff, he had very little time to read the Bible. And he pleaded with the authorities of the Bible College, why will you not change your syllabus? Instead of studying all this rationalist nonsense as the basis of your program, why can't you start with teaching the Bible and then deal with the criticisms of the critics as they come along? Oh, it's high time in the churches we got back to a belief that scripture is the word of God. And the famous text that is our leading text this evening comes from Paul's letter, to Timothy chapter three and verse sixteen. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. And all believers believe that, don't they? That's the first bit of the verse. They believe the first bit. They'd go to the stake for that, wouldn't they? That all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Ha, they'd go to the stake for that belief. Uh, the next bit says that all scripture is profitable for teaching. Not quite sure that we believe that quite so much. When did you last hear Chronicles expounded? For all scripture? Profitable? Ah, God give us not only to affirm a grasp on the fact that all scripture is inspired of God by the very deep conviction that all scripture is profitable for teaching. Where then does this, uh, belief, on what does it rest? That all scripture is the word of God, such that if God opened the heaven this very night and talked to us, he would speak nothing else than what he has written in his word. I find that a tremendous incentive to study. I don't know about you, the belief that this is the word of God. I find study hard. I find it hard to try and think through particularly some of the less common books of Holy Scripture, and so I read them and find myself knocking my head against the wall and getting nowhere fast. Uh, so I, I tell the Lord about it, and I say, Lord, I see what you've written, but I just don't get the point of it. Pray, what is the point of it? And talk to the Lord because I do believe that if God opened heaven and spoke to me here and now, he would speak what he has spoken in his book. We need to get hold of it, don't we? This is God's love letter to his people. It's the way he courts us. Don't be disappointed, you young folks. You know, I've often wondered what it would be like if the Lord Jesus came to dinner like he came to Martha and Mary's house. What would you talk about if the Lord came to dinner? There he would be seated, and of course the dinner would be the most marvelous dinner you'd ever put on, wouldn't it? What else would be? Carrots done to a nicety. And what would you talk about? Lord, it's been a beautiful day today. The weather has been good. Yes, it has, my child. I made it. It's better than yesterday's weather. It rained a lot yesterday, Lord. Yes, I know, I'm omniscient. Oh. Um, have you seen the... Oh, perhaps we better not ask that. Um. Have you read any good books recently? Well, I wrote a lot. What do you speak about next? What would you say if the Lord started to say, what did you think of Leviticus chapter sixteen? What would you say? For you know, our Lord had the most embarrassing of habits when he was here on earth. In the midst of a conversation or an argument, he'd suddenly say, have you not read what David did? It's embarrassing to say. No, Lord, I haven't read that bit. Where does that come? That comes in Samuel, my child. Oh yeah, well, I don't find that interesting. I find that a little bit boring. You do? Because I wrote it. What on earth are you going to talk to the Lord in heaven about? This is not merely a book of instructions, you know. This isn't just like, uh, our car manuals. I've got a car manual. I, I never read the thing, you'll see, except when the car goes wrong, and then I find it mighty difficult to find any place that would tell me how to put it right. But anyway, I do- I, I, I read it when things go wrong to know the instructions how to put it right. But I tell you now, I don't take it to bed with me to read this beautiful thing and feel like song in my heart when I read it. I don't. It's just to tell you how to do things. And it sometimes is possible to treat the Bible like a car manual, isn't it? Uh, these are the instructions. You need to read them now and again to keep you on the right lines, but other than that... It's more than that, isn't it? It is instruction. I repeat, it's God's love letter. It forms a conversation with us, as it did for the two disciples as the Lord walked with them on the road to Emmaus, and beginning from Genesis round to Malachi, he expounded in all the scripture the things concerning himself. So then this believes that this is the word of God in that sense, the word of the living God. On what does it base itself? I suggest to you that we have two witnesses, and as far as we Gentiles are concerned, I apologize if any of you are Jews, but imagining that most of us here tonight are Gentiles, as far as we Gentiles are concerned, we have two major witnesses for this belief that the Bible is God's word. And the first of them is Jesus Christ, our Lord himself. And secondly, it is what the Bible says about itself. You'll see the Bible not only tells us what God says about sin, about salvation, about the Savior, but the Bible also, from time to time, speaks about itself and describes itself as the written word of God and sen- says things about its inspiration and its revelation and its authority. But first, I personally put, as being a Gentile, our first witness to the inspiration of scripture is our blessed Lord himself. Now, this is a practical problem, uh, you'll see. Eh... Let me put it this way, if I can. You're trying to witness, uh, to your unconverted friend. You want him to read about the Lord Jesus. And you take to him the Bible, and you say, the Bible says this, that, and the other. And he says, I don't believe the Bible. So what do you say then? Do you say, oh, there's no use going any further then, because unless you first read the Bible, you can never come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So, so, so you've first got to believe the Bible. Is that the way round? You first have to believe the Bible before you believe that Jesus is the Son of God. No, that isn't the way round, actually. And you can see that if you watch, uh, the apostles going about their preaching and evangelization in the Roman and the Greek world. It was a different thing when they came to the synagogues of the Jews, where, of course, the Jews already believed the Bible is the word of God. So they preached in the Bible. But when they went, say, to Athens and stood on Mars Hill, uh, well, they didn't even mention the Bible. You say they were a bad ungodly lot then. We would have, if we'd had the chance to get on Miles Hill, we would have started saying our first hymn is number so and so, and then I had a prayer, and then the announcements, and our second hymn is this. And the dear Areopagites would have been a little bit perplexed, wouldn't they? Now let us turn to the book of Proverbs. You know what the notes you were talking about. No, they didn't. They didn't say first you had to believe the Bible. They said we're here as the inspired and authoritative witnesses of the Messiah. We want to tell you about Jesus. The God who made the world has sent his son, and he was crucified, and he's now risen from the dead. And God has given witness in raising him from the dead that one day there will come the day of judgment, and this Jesus Christ is going to be the judge. That's how they began. And through the power of the Holy Spirit preaching through them and witnessing to the Lord Jesus his death and his resurrection, people got converted. And because they thus came to believe Jesus is the Son of God, now risen from the dead, then they believed what the Lord Jesus said about the status of Holy Scripture. It's the way around it was. And if you were to ask me, why do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? Well, I believe it because my mum and dad told me so, but of course, since then, I come to my own personal faith. And the first reason I believe that the Bible is the word of God is because Jesus said it is. I believe him. There are a lot of people that profess to believe in Jesus Christ, you know, and they don't accept that the Bible is inspired. That is a major problem within Christendom. But it is utterly illogical to profess to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and then to refuse to believe what he himself said about Holy Scripture. Then, of course, when we look at Scripture itself, both old and new, it constantly professes to be the word of God spoken and written. To help us understand the principles involved, I want us to get hold of three words, and then briefly to try and see why they are distinct, but all of them are related to this question of faith that the J- the Bible is the word of God. And the first word is revelation. I mean not the book of the revelation, but the act of revealing. The Bible is God's revelation to men. God has revealed himself. Revelation then. And then the second term, inspiration. I believe the Bible is inspired by God, and the men who wrote it were inspired by God. Second term then is inspiration, and the third term is authority. What authority has the Bible? The authority of the Bible, we shall find, rests on the first two things. The fact that it is the revelation made by God himself to us, the revealing of God. The second reason that it is inspired of God. You could put it this way round, if you like to see the difference. When God revealed himself to men, his prophets and apostles, then God was communicating to them something they could not have known unless God himself revealed it to them. Therefore, God revealed to his holy apostles and prophets. Ah, but then came the second step. Those holy apostles and prophets were meant to speak what they had learned by revelation. They were meant to write down what they had heard from God by his revelation. And how could God, uh, secure that what those men had been shown would now be spoken exactly as God wanted it to be spoken, or that it would be written down exactly as God wanted it to be written down? So first God revealed these truths to them. Now it was a question of their taking that truth and passing it on in word of, of mouth or by writing. And to secure that that should be done exactly as God wanted it, God inspired them. That's the second stage, isn't it? First comes revelation, second stage, the communication of it through spo- speech or writing, and for that purpose, God inspired them, and that led to the authority of God's word spoken and God's word written. So let's get hold first of this idea of revelation. We need to get hold of it because it will answer for us the taunt of many a skeptic. Many centuries now, uh, since a skeptic once laughed at, uh, believers in God, and he said, just look at them, you'll see. They believe in God. They think they've discovered God. All they've done is to invent something out of their own minds, and you can see that their God is something that they have invented because they picture God like a super duper human being sitting up there in the sky. And they said, you know, if elephant- elephants thought about these things, apparently they don't, but if elephants thought about these things and, uh, claimed to have found God, they would represent God as a mighty great super duper elephant, you'll see. And that shows that the elephants, uh, thought it up themselves, you'll see. And that men think of God as a super duper go- uh, human being up in the sky shows that men invented the idea. And what's the answer to that? Well, the answer to that is to admit first and foremost, indeed to point it out to your skeptical friend. Um, indeed, indeed, men could not, by their searching, find out God. The Bible itself says it. We should know nothing at all about God, by think however hard we might try, unless God first reveals himself. You listen to how the Lord Jesus spoke on that, uh, on that m- uh, uh, fashion, you'll see. He says, Matthew chapter eleven verse twenty five, no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and he to whom the Son is willing to reveal him. That is Christ saying to us all and sundry, you'll not know the Father, you'll know nothing about him worth knowing unless I personally am prepared to reveal God to you. What we have in the Bible is not a record of man's attempt to work out what God might be like, in spite of what the critics say, for the Bible itself tells you that such a process would end nowhere. The Bible is saying we should not know anything about God unless God reveals it, and the Bible is the record and the substance of what God has revealed to us. It's important to get hold of that, isn't it? And that is, of course, how the, uh, uh, uh, the apostles talk to Paul writing to the Ephesian church. He says, I want to tell you about my, the mystery, my grip, my understanding of the mystery that has been hidden in God from all the ages, but has now been revealed. Not something that Paul thought up. It was God stepping in now to communicate to Paul a purpose that God had had from all eternity, and God had deliberately kept it concealed, and nobody knew about it until the time came for its revelation, and God revealed it to the Apostle Paul. It's what makes the Bible so exciting stuff, isn't it, what? Oh, that God has, the living God has revealed it. And you'll see our Lord Jesus is on record as saying that, uh, his father, he thanked his father for it. Thou hast hid these things, he says, from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babies. That is the biblical position. But whereas God is willing to reveal himself, and the Lord Jesus willing to reveal the Father, there are people from whom God hides himself. Why is that? Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babies. Well, you see, that's for the simple reason that God is not a thing, nor is he a subject like physics or cookery, you'll see. He is a person. And not to compare great things with small, um, uh, you can think of me. I happen to be a person too, a very limited sort, but I'm a person, you'll see. Now, I'm not just a thing, nor a subject. Now, an atom is a thing, a very small thing, as you know, uh, you see. And if you decided you wanted to know about an atom, well, it's very simple. You'll see you get a cyclotron a few miles long, costing multi-billions of pounds, and you get some very egghead scientists, and you get hold of an old atom, and you put it inside, and you get hold of some particles, and you rev them up to colossal great speeds, near the speed of light as you can get them, and you cause the aforesaid particles to bump into the old atom, and the poor old atom is helpless. It has to come as- adrift, you see, and reveal what's inside. That's very simple to get to know an atom. Cost you a few billion, of course, and you need considerable intelligence, otherwise it's straightforward, and the atom can't do much about it. But I'm not an atom, I'm a person. You could get hold of me and put me in your cyclotron and bombard me with particles forever, and you'd never know... me. You'd m- measure my bones and measure the electrical impulses in my brain. Even then you wouldn't know what I was thinking. Why is that? Because I'm not a thing, I'm a person. There are things about me that you would only know if I, as a person, am prepared to communicate them to you, and God is a person. And he longs to make himself known to his creatures. But he demands his creatures take the right attitude towards him. If they're arrogant, and they think they're the judges, and God has got to come up to what they think, if they're not prepared to believe him, well, God doesn't bother to reveal himself to them. But the babes who are prepared before Almighty God to take the place of infants and humble themselves before God, then the mighty God of heaven is prepared to reveal himself, and a genius at revealing himself he is and conveying it to the simplest of people. Another story. Revelation, therefore. We see it also, if we're prepared to take the analogy, in creation around us. We are to seek God, the Bible says, even though, unless God reveals himself, we shall not find him. We are to seek him. So take the scientist who, uh, is studying the universe around. Um, the universe, the Bible says, is God's self-revelation, created by the word of God. And as you look upon creation, there are certain things about God that you could deduce from the creation. You could see it intuitively, namely that his almighty power and the fact that he's no mere human or created, uh, being, he is God. The Bible doesn't claim you can see the love of God in creation, but it says you can see his power and his divinity. Santa studies it. What is he doing? Well, he's not creating the evidence. The universe had to be there before he could study it, didn't it? And when it comes to revealing God's, uh, power and his Godhead, and God reveals it in creation, God supplies the evidence. That is God revealing himself. The scientist doesn't create the evidence, he studies it. And his opinions and deductions had to always be tested by bringing them back to the evidence. Do they properly interpret the evidence? So it is with God's revelation in his holy word. First of all, God had to reveal it. It's not we who create the evidence, it's God who gives it. There does God reveal himself, and we are to seek him in his word, and he will give us understanding of it. Revelation then. And what a marvelous, uh, revelation it is through scripture and, uh, finally through his son. Bible is one long story, isn't it? Of God who has revealed himself by speaking. As I said, he spoke at creation. Listen to Genesis, and God said, and God said, and God said. We believe the world were framed by the word of God. This is God speaking. Psalm nineteen says, how wonderful is God's creation. It speaks the glory of God, and likewise his word speaks his glory. God in creation speaking, God speaking in redemption. Moses at the burning bush, and God calling to him, and at the burning bush revealing himself to Moses, speaking to Moses, the God who speaks. When Moses said, tell me your name, you say you're the God of my fathers, when I come to the people and they'll say, but who is this God of our fathers? What name shall I give you? And God says, I am that I am. I will be whom I will be. The declaration of the name of God, the God who speaks and speaks to reveal himself. The God who spoke on Mount Sinai. They heard a voice. The God who spoke on the cleft of, uh, to the Moses standing in the cleft of the rock and talked of his righteousness, yet of his mercy. God who speaks all through the Old Testament, through the prophets, in different type of language, sometimes in poetry, sometimes in prose, sometimes in wisdom li- literature, sometimes in laws, sometimes in history, but whatever form he uses, it is God who is speaking. When God revealed himself in the Old Testament, of course, on times he revealed the future. You listen to Daniel. You remember the story in Daniel two, for instance? Nebuchadnezzar went to bed, uh, with a very troubled head one night, you'll see, and he had a dream, you'll see, and it startled him in the middle of the night. He felt it perhaps came from the gods. He had this dream when he woke up in the morning, he thought, well, what does this dream mean? And he was about to call these wise men when he had second thoughts, and he said to himself, yes, I call these wise men. I pay them pretty hefty wages, you see, these university types dress up in their white jackets, but uh uh, when I go to them and say, what did I dream, they'll tell me any old nonsense and make up a yarn, and how shall I know that that's the right answer? So Nebuchadnezzar bethought him of a, of a way of deciding that. He, um, called his wise men and he said, gentlemen, he said, uh, I had a dream last night, and I'm asking you now to interpret it to me, and if you do, I'll give you a great reward, and if you don't, I shall hang you and put you on the dunghill. They said, yes, your majesty, very reasonable of you. Uh, just tell us what the dream was, I will tell you the interpretation. No, he said, that's precisely what I'm not going to do. You tell me what I dreamed. And you see his heart, can't you? You claim, gentlemen, to have revelation from gods or something or other. Well, if you have revelations from gods about the future and what my dream meant, you just get revelation from your gods about what I dreamed last night. They said, no, that's silly, your majesty. And he said, if you don't do it, I shall have you executed. And so they saw there was no hope, and they said this was no, never a thing asked of any monarch or anybody at all. In other words, that was court language, diplomatic language, for you're the biggest old arrogant fool that ever lived. Only I didn't put it in that language, you see, a little nonsense. Uh, uh, and they couldn't reveal the past. And Daniel sought mercies of God, and in that hour the secret was revealed. Not merely about the future, but about the past. What Nebuchadnezzar had dreamed last night. That's a very important thing, you know. Revelation is not merely about the future or about the present, it can be about the past. What do you think Genesis chapter one is? Moses wasn't there when creation was made. This is God revealing the past. Yes, and when you read the great historical books of scripture, they are about things that have already happened, and this is God's view of them, and God's prophetic interpretation of them. God revealing the significance of the past. Of course, he talks about the future too. But if God has spoken in the past through the prophets, says Hebrews chapter one, in these last days he's spoken supremely in his son. What a wonderful di- title it is of our blessed Lord Jesus. He is the Word of God. He didn't become the Word of God when he was born in Bethlehem. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He is, as the theologians would call him, the second person of the Trinity. A part of the Godhead whose very function and nature is to reveal God and to speak him forth. It's one of the very functions of deity. Oh, I take comfort in my, in my heart, you'll see. It's not just a question of me trying, as I pore over scripture, to understand it by my own unaided ability. God, there is a person in the very Godhead whose very function and title and nature is to be the one who reveals God to the likes of me. Oh, fancy having a divine person there at your side, pulled to be the revealer of God to you. As in the beginning was the word. And as I've said, not only our blessed Lord then, but his apostles too. I've already quoted you Ephesians three, the great mystery revealed to the holy apostles and prophets in the New Testament. And the final vision of the risen Lord meeting John on the Isle of Patmos, and in form of vision making himself and his glories known and speaking to John. The God who reveals himself in speaking. The God who, uh, not only speaks, but the, uh, God then who reveals himself to his holy apostles and prophets, and then inspires them to speak in turn and to write what has been revealed to them. And so that what they say and what they write shall be God's message transmitted accurately as God intended it to, he inspires them. Now here comes our second big term, and it's important to see the slight difference in function and meaning when we talk about inspiration, as from when we were talking about revelation. Revelation concerned with the content revealed by God. Inspiration now, the mechanism by which the chosen apostles and prophets speak or write, and God secures that what they speak and write is God's message correctly transmitted. Inspiration, therefore. Two Peter one verses nineteen to twenty one ah are important in this connection of what inspiration means. Let me read it to you. This is two Peter one verse nineteen onwards. We have the word of prophecy made, and the Greek doesn't mean more sure, it means very sure. Whereunto you do well that you take heed as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation. That is what it is not. What is it? For no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit. Now that's a verse that have o- have often been used and commented upon, and we must take care to understand it rightly. I have no time to discuss with you all the different views. One of the prominent views has been no prophecy is of private interpretation, and people have said that means that you can't just read one scripture and see what it means, uh, you have to compare it with other scriptures, you see. So no prophecy, if it's, if it's his private interpretation, you'll see. Uh, you have to compare it with other scriptures. Well, that's always very good advice, of course, to check one scripture by another. But if all you s- understand is John three sixteen and you don't even know what John three fifteen says, nor what John three seventeen says, but you do know what John um three sixteen says, go out and preach it. It's jolly good, means what it says. Do you see? Preach it, it is the word of God and true. Yes, it's good to compare scripture with scripture. And other people have said, well, no scriptures of private interpretation. No good you making up your mind. Before you decide what it means, you must ask him, you see, or her or somebody else, you see. You have to take the church's interpretation. Doesn't mean that either. It's always good to compare with your fellow believer. That's why God has put us in families together as the Lord's people, that we might help each other and save each other from becoming cranks and having silly interpretations. But the passage isn't talking about our interpretation. It's talking about how a prophecy came to the prophet. No prophecy came this way. Not how, it's not talking about how did the prophecy go out, or how is the prophecy to be interpreted. It's telling us how the prophecy wa- came. No prophecy came from a man's own analysis, the Greek word can mean. What do you mean by that? When Jeremiah announced that God was going to destroy Jerusalem, it wasn't because Jeremiah had sat down, scratched his prophetic head, thought about the situation, and came to a shrewd conclusion that it's likely that Jerusalem will probably be destroyed. It wasn't that. Didn't come by Jeremiah's own analysis of the situation and shrewd prediction. How did it come then? Well, that's the point. Well, you see, it didn't come, says Peter. That's what he's talking about. No prophecy ever came. He's talking about how a prophecy came. It didn't come by the will of man. Jeremiah saying, I must say something here. What shall I do? I think I'll startle these Jerusalemites by making a prediction. No, no, no. Didn't come that way. How did it come then? Well, men spake from God. That's how it came. Oh yes, and by what mechanism? And now the mechanism is told us. Men spake from God as they were born along by the Holy Spirit. That's how it came. Men speaking from God. And to ensure that what God said, they would say, and say it accurately as God required it. They weren't left to their own devices as to how to go about it. They spoke from God as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit. So the men were inspired. But then when they wrote God's chosen prophets and apostles, when they wrote the scripture, the writing that they wrote was inspired. We come back to that verse that we quoted at the beginning. Uh, Timothy is told to remember that every scripture, all scripture, is inspired of God and is profitable for teaching. All scripture is theopneustos, says, uh, Paul, God breathed. But what does it mean when it says that all scripture is God breathed? Some people used to suggest, I think they've given up suggesting it now, at least I hope so, they, uh, they thought it would be helpful to compare scripture with the story of the creation of man, you know. Remember the story of the creation of man in Genesis? God made man of the dust of the ground, and there was Adam, all new and sparkling, made of the dust of the ground, and I presume lying on the ground, you'll see. Dead, lifeless. When God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he came alive. And people have said, ah, that's what Paul means. All scripture is like that. Ha. Um, when you come to it, absolutely dead, lifeless kind of stuff. Until God breathes into scripture. No, no, no, no. God, scripture is the living word of the living God. It isn't like Adam before he was put breath in his nostrils. It's the living word of the living God. How does it become that? Not, well, because God didn't breathe into scripture. All scripture is breathed out by God. That's what it means. It is the very breath of God. He created the whole universe by the breath of his mouth, and his word written to us is his word, because when he took the penman in hand, God breathed out his word, and the penman wrote it down. All scripture is inspired of God. That's the two sides, isn't it? The men were inspired, the scripture is inspired. That is the claim of scripture talking about itself. I could, but I mustn't, quote you all kinds of scriptures that talk about that. Uh, you'll see. But, um, let me cite, finally, just two things from the New Testament on this topic. Paul, in one Corinthians fourteen, writing to the difficult church at Corinth, says thus, if any man is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things I write are the commandments of the Lord. Scripture written by Paul, what Paul wrote, God wrote, so to speak, are the commandments of the Lord. We all see our Lord himself when he appeared to John on the Isle of Patmos. Remember what he said as John lay almost dead at his feet, he put his right hand upon his shoulder and bid him stand. And then he said, what thou seest, write in a book. You'll see. And then John had to listen as the Lord dictated seven letters in succession. And each letter begins, thus saith the one who... and some description is given of the Lord Jesus. It's the Lord Jesus dictating the letter to John. But as the letter comes to its conclusion, the remark is made, him that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit speaks. What a succession. There stands the risen Lord speaking, and as he speaks, it is the Holy Spirit speaking. And John is on the receiving message, and he is told to write it. It's not merely then that these men did their best to understand what God had revealed to them, like a liberal would say, and of course only understood what God said rather imperfectly. And then they came to write it down, and they made, well, they did their best, poor souls, but, uh, they weren't highly educated, and so they made an even worse attempt at writing it down properly. So there originally they may have been some, uh, there may have been some revelation, but it was imperfectly understood by the apostles and prophets, and then still more imperfectly written down. No, it is not that. Scripture explicitly says it is not that. Men spake from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Men wrote, and what they wrote was breathed out by God. Yeah. What is said of the New Testament, of course, is said in many places of the old. We haven't got the time to consider it. What does scripture mean by inspired? Well, you may have to tell your friends, uh, that they've got the wrong end of the stick, and they tell you that, well, I, I think there are many inspiring passages in the New Testament. You look at that lovely poem on love that Paul wrote, you know, in one Corinthians thirteen. Isn't that very moving and inspiring? They're thinking that inspiration means a sort of a purple patch, a real rhapsody of moving your heart and soul. If you were to tell them that Leviticus description of the entrails and innards and intestines and whatnot of an old ox is also inspired of God, they'd be a little shocked. They can't believe that that is inspired. Why not? Well, it doesn't move them. Well, I can understand it doesn't move them, but uh, uh, Julie, uh, that isn't a question. Inspiration in scripture doesn't mean something that inspires you, an inspirational power with some song leader. Has nothing to do with that at all. It is the fact that it is God breathed, and whether it be exalted poetry, lyric poetry like the Psalms, marvelous stuff, or legal enactments as in Leviticus, they're equally inspired, because they are Holy Scripture. Some people argue, don't they, uh, does inspiration mean verbal inspiration? And my reply to that, what other could you possibly have? Think about it a moment. If God spoke to men, did he speak without words or something? Our people say, well, it's not words, you know, it's meaning that counts. Well, of course. And all you folks have been taught to translate from English into any other language, hot and tot or otherwise, do you see, will have been taught by your teachers, don't translate words, translate meaning, do you see? And that's a very important thing. But you will observe that whether you're writing English or Hottentot, you can't communicate anything without words for nothing much. You've got to choose words, whatever the meaning is, you've got to choose words, haven't you, to express the meaning. You can't say to the Hottentot, and the Hottentot say, you don't get very far that way. What, whatever the meaning, you have to use words to express it. And when God speaks to us and inspired men to write, it was God who inspired them in the choosing of words. You say, isn't that a very narrow view? I mean, what does it matter? Take, you can call a thing a boat, or you can call it a ship. And in normal circumstances, in daily talk, it doesn't matter which you use. In technical language it would, but in ordinary language it, a boat and a ship, one and the same thing. No, it doesn't matter which, but you've got to choose one. You can't write both, can you? In one sentence, I mean. And God chose words, of course he did. And how do we know that? Well, in John seventeen, mark the reference. Our Lord is reporting on his mission, and he tells his father, I've given them thy word. That's the message. But he also says, I have given them thy words. He spoke the very words of God, not simply the message. Hold the pattern of sound words, says Paul. Of course, it is verbal inspiration. What else could it be? People say we can't believe that because wouldn't that mean that God was treating a man like some human machine, do you see, uh, if he sort of, um, uh, overpowered a man's personality and just used him as a machine to speak God's own words, didn't, wouldn't that be something not very nice for God to do? Well, no, ladies and gentlemen, if God created us, he's got a right to do what he likes with us. So, moreover, when you read the New Testament, the Old Testament, you find that God hasn't erased the personalities. You can tell Peter from Paul, can't you, any day of the week. But as for erasing personalities, uh, let me take, uh, an example. Here's a four-year-old. She understands some things, not everything in the world, and father is working at his study, minding his own business, when mother tells four-year-old to go to daddy and say, the postman's just come and mother has just read a letter, you'll see, that Aunt Emma Liner is coming on Friday. And four-year-old comes into the study in great excitement and tells daddy, with all the eloquence he can muster, that Aunt Emma Liner is coming on Friday. As far as four-year-old goes, that simply means Aunt Emma Liner is coming on Friday. But to dad, it means enormous amount more. He happens to know Emmalina, and you can imagine all the other things that dad begins to think about, and they've not entered a four-year-old's head. Has mother abused the child's personality? Of course she hasn't. One Peter chapter one tells us that when the Spirit of Christ was in the prophets, and he prophesied of the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow. They weren't stupid. They realized it was about the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. They didn't understand the whole thing, though, for they didn't understand what time or what manner of time it referred to. And they had to search diligently to try and find out, after they had prophesied, what epoch this referred to. And then it was revealed to them that not to themselves, but to us they did minister. Prophets very often, though they understood a great deal of what they said, said things that, because of God's foreknowledge, went far beyond what they themselves would have understood. Inspiration, therefore, and many things else ought to be said, but finally we come to authority. Because in scripture it is God's revelation of himself and all the other information that he wants us to have. Because that is so, scripture is God's revelation. God has also inspired the prophets to speak and the prophets and apostles and historians to write, and the poets as well, and the wisdom writers, in his word, to secure that that revelation and its content should be securely and accurately conveyed. Hence then, and finally, the authority of scripture. Because it is God's word, spoken and written. You see that authority in the life of our Lord magnificently displayed, don't you? In his temptation, his reply to his satanic majesty four times over was, it stands written. And in the Garden of Gethsemane to his disciples, how then shall the scripture be fulfilled? Marvelous Son of God, Word of God that he was. Yet becoming man, he bowed to the authority of the Word of God and obeyed. Because it was God's Word. God's Word written. And so are we expected to obey. Because it is God's Word. Yes, understanding it, interpreting it, making sure that we're applying it rightly to our own day and age, and thus and thus and thus, these are extra questions, and if we get the time, we shall discuss them on another occasion. But let's start and s- and finish tonight with the foundational thing. The Bible is the word of God. What the Bible says, God says. Even the things that were written before time were written for our learning. Just let me remind you of two things. It's possible to misuse the Bible and the study of scripture. To the Jews of his own day, our blessed Lord said, you search the scripture. Very good. But he said, you know, these are they that testify of me, and you will not come to me that you might have life. You think that in them you have life, but in that sense, that's not true. The scripture, God breathes as it is, the word of the living God, is pointing to Christ, and you can't get life without coming to Christ. That's important, isn't it? You can study the Bible as an academic discipline without ever coming to Christ. That is always a challenge as we come to Holy Scripture. It is the word of God, the breathed out word of God, but let us always be conscious of its purpose. Its purpose is to lead us to Christ. The Pharisees studied Scripture, but they weren't prepared to come to Christ, and their study in the end was in vain. Then let us remember that we shall not rightly understand Holy Scripture, given by inspiration and revelation and inspiration of God as it is, without the work of God's Holy Spirit within. The world cannot receive the things of God, says Holy Scripture. For what man knoweth the things of a man, say the spirit of a man that's in him. You'll see, show your dog a bone, and he understands what it is, and a bit of beef, and he understands what that is, and comes around your table wanting a piece because he's got a stomach like you've got a stomach, and he understands all those lovely feelings that you're enjoying as he watches you eating a piece of steak. But take him into your library and show him your copy of Rembrandt on the wall and say, there, old Fido, have a look at that. No, make head and a tail of it. He licks it, he smells it, may do other things, chew it or something, can't make out anything, head and a tail of it, can't see what you see in it. Why? Because he's not human. The only way he'll ever come to an art appreciation course of Rembrandt is if he could have a human spirit put in him. And you'll know, unconverted men make very little of scripture. That is to be expected. Who knows the things of God, save the Spirit of God? The glorious thing is that God has given us his spirit, that we might know the things that are so richly given us of God. So may God use our little study to encourage us and strengthen our faith in his word. May it have that d- that result that it will drive us, draw us is the better word, ever more constantly to his word. So with conviction that it is the word of God that God here speaks to me and speaks to us, that we shall persist in our reading of it and our talking to the Lord about it until in that subjective sense, he reveals himself to us, as he did to those who walked on the road to Emmaus as he expounded the scriptures and opened their minds that they might understand his word. Shall we pray? Our Father, now we thank thee together for this wonderful gift that is the gift of thine inspired word. We thank thee for the wonderful revelation of thyself that has given us therein, and we bless thee for life's experience, that the more we have read and the more we have sought thee in thy word, the more thou hast gone on, uh, gone on to show us wonderful things, so that we can readily believe by experience as well as by the authority of thy word, that in thy son are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now, Lord Jesus, as we go from our study, we say as they did on the road to Emmaus, Lord, it is late in the day, and the day declines. Come in with us and abide with us, we pray, that our hearts too and our eyes may be open to see thee. Beyond the sacred page, we seek thee, Lord. Today, make thyself known to our hearts, we beseech thee, for we ask it for thy glory and for our blessing and for thy name's sake. Amen. Amen. Just before you get time to run off as hard as you can, uh, the question of the authority and inspiration and revelation of scripture bring with them questions. What about all the contradictions in the Bible? And these can be difficulties, can't they, if, uh, unconverted people point them out to us especially, and we have no answer to them. I cannot begin in these talks to deal with them because every one has to be dealt with separately. Prove that one isn't a contradiction, but then that doesn't prove that the next one is not a contradiction, so you've got to go on to the next one. One book among many written on these things is this worthy tome here, would make a beginning anyway, if you care, it's good to know about it. Uh, When Critics Ask, a handbook, popular handbook of Bible difficulties, and goes through the scriptures book by book, picking out certain things that are difficult and suggesting answers to them. A useful book if you wish to qual- be- qualify yourself for witness for the Lord to thoroughgoing skeptics. Similarly, but site isn't style dealing with supposed difficulties, historical difficulties in the four gospels, the reliability of the historical reliability of the gospels by Craig Blomberg. It is a serious academic study, but done by a believer and done, uh, i- i- i- to support our faith and, uh, give us confidence in our witness for the Lord. And finally, if you don't know it before, in this little book by J. I. Packer, God Has Spoken, there is at the end, uh, in addition to the helpful things he says, what has come to be called the Chicago Statement about Scripture and its inerrancy. What do we mean exactly by the terms revelation, inspiration, and in the inerrancy of scripture, and what we don't mean? A very balanced statement about it, and uh, if you don't have it, it's printed in various places, but this is one place where it is printed. It comes as a result of much prayer, much study by godly academics and others. If you haven't seen it and read it, it is certainly worth reading. It is called The Chicago Statement plus Explanation. It is, uh, as I say, it is a combination effort by many believers. Thank you very much for your long, your long, your long, your long, your long, your long, your long, your long, your long.