Of the Scriptures II Timothy 3: 16-17

Transcription

1 Of the Scriptures II Timothy 3: Intro: Last week we began looking at "what we believe and why we believe it" by addressing the covenant we have made together. This evening I want to begin looking at our articles of faith. It is of the supreme importance that we begin with what we believe concerning the Bible, because is it determines what we believe about everything else! Of The Scriptures We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men supernaturally inspired; that it has truth without any admixture of error for its matter; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the age, the only complete and final revelation of the will of God to man; the true center of Christian union and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried. By "The Holy Bible" we mean that collection of sixty-six books, from Genesis to Revelation, which, as originally written does not only contain and convey the Word of God, but IS the very Word of God. By "inspiration" we mean that the books of the Bible were written by holy men of old, as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, in such a definite way that their writings were supernaturally and verbally inspired and free from error, as no other writings have ever been or ever will be inspired. The Bible is a holy book, we must reverence it and stand in awe of it for there is no other book that compares with the Bible in all of literature. The Bible is a miracle book for no other book or piece of literature has withstood the test of time and prevailed over the centuries. We as an independent Bible-believing Baptist church base everything we believe and preach on the fact that the Bible is a miracle book! It is the foundation on which all faith and practice is based. Written by men who were supernaturally inspired, it is the only complete and final revelation of God to man. From Genesis to Revelation it stands unified without error or contradiction. I. It Is Miraculous In Its Inspiration A. Definitions 1. Revelation a. The act of God in communicating truth to the mind of man not known before and incapable of being discovered by man unaided. b. It was accomplished variously by mental suggestion, by external vision, or by oral statement. c. Types of Revelation There are two basic types of revelation: 1. general revelation General revelation speaks to the fact that all men can know something about God in a general way. a. nature Romans 1: Every person can know there is a God merely by looking at His Creation. This is why all men are condemned to Hell who have not placed their faith in Him. b. conscience Romans 1: 32 c. Through general revelation we can know about God: that He exists, that He is the Creator;

2 that He will judge, etc. 2. special or specific revelation a. Ephesians 3: 1-3 b. Hebrews 1: 1 c. Through special revelation we can not only know about God; we can actually know God. We learn that He is love; that He is Truth: that he is Holy; etc. 3. So revelation is when God communicates something about Himself to man which was previously unknown. 2. Inspiration a. This refers to the controlling influence which God exerted over the human authors by whom the Old and New Testaments were written. b. Revelation involved the communication of truth from God to man and inspiration involved the recording of that truth. c. Scriptures 1. 2 Peter 1: Timothy 3: Illumination a. The supernatural help granted by the Spirit of God to the reader of Holy Scripture to enable him to lay hold on the divine message. b. 1 Corinthians 2: 9-14 B. Inspiration is the determining influence that acted on the sacred authors, moving them to put into writing the revelation which they had received from God. C. We believe the Bible to be verbally inspired, that is every word is literally "God-breathed" so that we can look to the Scriptures and declare; Thus saith the Lord! D. Everything we know about God, and all of our doctrine that is taught and preached is because God, through inspiration, has recorded His Word in the Bible! E. Bible Versions 1. I want to be very careful here so that no one misunderstands what I am going to say. First, let's take a look at the pertinent phrase in our Articles of the Faith. 2. By "The Holy Bible" we mean that collection of sixty-six books, from Genesis to Revelation, which, as originally written does not only contain and convey the Word of God, but IS the very Word of God. 3. I want you to understand that going by the definition we have in our Articles of the Faith (which has also been the belief of Baptists for centuries) it is actually the original writings which are the Word of God. 4. In other words, what I hold in my hand is not the Word of God, it is a translation of the Word of God. 5. You may be thinking, "Preacher, I don't understand the distinction." 6. The reason I feel like I have to point out that it is the original manuscripts which were inspired by God is that there are

3 people out there teaching false doctrine at best and heresy at worst. There are those who say that the KJV is the ONLY Bible for English-speaking people and that is not what this church believes or what any Baptists believed before about 1960 or so. These folks go so far as to say that the translators of the KJV were inspired and because of that the KJV overrules the Greek and Hebrew when they differ. This is absurd. 7. While I only use the KJV that does not mean that I think it has somehow benefited from secondary inspiration. The KJV is a very good translation, but that is all it is, a TRANSLATION. It is the Word of God in the sense that it accurately translates what the originals say. But, then so is the NASB, the NKJV, and others. 8. Now, don't worry. I'm not going to start using another translation. I like the KJV, but I will not worship it. The Bible is miraculous in its inspiration, but it is also: II. The Bible Is Miraculous In Its Preservation A. The Bible Promises God's Preservation 1. Matthew 24: 35, "Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." 2. Luke 16: 17, "And it is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass, than one tittle of the Law to fail." 3. Psalm 12: 6-7, "The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of Earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, Thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever." 4. That leads us to the next point. Has God indeed preserved His Word? B. The Bible is a Unique Book 1. Only a small percentage of books survive for more than a quarter of a century. 2. Even less survive for a hundred years, and only a very small number survive for a 1000 years. 3. However, the Word of God has survived for thousands of years. 4. The text of the Old Testament has never been in dispute because of the great care which was taken by the Jewish Scribes to insure its accurate transmission. 5. The evidence that the Greek texts we have today are accurate is overwhelming. 6. In fact, the textual evidence for the New Testament is far and away stronger than for any other such ancient work. By 1989, scholars had catalogued 5488 early Greek manuscript portions of the New Testament. These manuscripts, along with about 20,000 translations, which include over 10,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate, provide a truly phenomenal record of the text of the New Testament. The earliest of these fragments of manuscripts dates back to about 70 A. D. which was just a matter of a couple of years after it was written. 7. As a comparison, let us look at a few other ancient works. a. About 100 years before the New Testament was written, Julius Caesar wrote his account of the Gaelic Wars. Of this work we have about 10 copies, made about 1000 years after Caesar wrote them.

4 b. We have about 7 copies of the works of Plato that date approximately 1200 years after Plato died. c. For any single work of Aristotle we have about 50 copies, written about 1400 years after his death. d. We have 20 copies of of Livy's Roman History, e. two copies of Tacitus' Annals, f. eight copies of Thucydides' History. g. The most documented secular work from the ancient world is Homer's Illiad -- surviving on 643 manuscript copies. By contrast, as I said we have over 5400 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, most of which include the Gospels. h. The New Testament is the most highly documented book from the ancient world. i. Clearly the text of the New Testament is much more established than any of these works. For most of the ancient writers, we have tens of copies made a thousand years after they were written. For the New Testament, we have thousands of copies, beginning tens of years after they were written. j. We can definitely trust that we have an accurate translation of the words which the Holy Spirit actually gave the writers of the Bible in our hands. C. No other book has survived the perils of the centuries as has the Bible. 1. Times have drastically changed. 2. Rulers have risen to power and fallen. 3. The Word of God has been banned and burned. 4. Men have been commanded not to preach from its pages, yet it has always been preserved! The Bible is miraculous in its inspiration; it is miraculous in its preservation; and it is III. The Bible Is Miraculous In Its Power A. The Power to Convict of Sin 1. Acts 2: 37, "Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart and said, 'Men and brethren what shall we do?" It was the preaching of the Word of God that brought on this deep conviction. 2. Jeremiah 23: 29, "Is not My Word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" The Word of God can smash the hardest heart. 3. Hebrews 4: 12, "For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." The Word of God has a way of exposing the very inner workings of a person. The Word exposes what it truly on the inside. 4. The Word of God, carried home by the Spirit of God will still prick men's hearts. The Word of God bathed in prayer and

5 delivered to the unbeliever can still shatter the hardest of hearts. The Word of God in the hands of a Spirit-filled Christian can cut right through all of the armor a person has constructed to insulate themselves from God. The Word of God has the power to convict which leads us to the next point. B. The Power to Bring Salvation 1. 1 Peter 1: 23, "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever." 2. The human heart is the soil, the Word of God is the seed, God quickens it by the Holy Spirit, and the result is the salvation of man's soul! 3. Paul said, "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth..." (Rom. 1:16) But what is this Gospel? Turn to 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8. Notice that the Gospel is "according to the Scriptures." 4. You can tell a person that they need to be saved, you can tell them how to be saved, you can share the Gospel with them till you are blue in the face and you'll get nowhere, but something,miraculous happens when you show them in the Bible what you've been telling them. Something happens when a person sees the truth in the black and white of the Bible. C. The Power to Cleanse 1. Ephesians 5: 25-26, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." 2. Sanctify and cleanse means that the Word has the power to purify our lives inside and out. 3. Not only will the Word of God take the impurity out of the heart, but it will cleanse the outward life and make us usable in His service. 4. Psalm 119: 11, "Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee." D. The Bible is Miraculous in What It Gives Us 1. Wisdom Psalm 119: 130, "The entrance of Thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding to the simple." 2. Peace Psalm 85: 8, "I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for He will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints..." 3. Joy John 15: 11, "These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." 4. Assurance 1 John 5: 13, "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God."

6 5. Patience, Comfort, and Hope Romans 15: 4, "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." Conclusion: We believe that we have a supernatural Bible! It is a miracle book! It is miraculous in its Inspiration, in its Preservation, and in its Power. Our position on the Bible separates us from many other churches and groups of believers. We are BIBLE Baptists. We believe that this Holy Bible is the final authority in matters of faith and practice. God inspired it, preserved it, and empowered it...we are privileged to proclaim it here and around the world! It is good that we understand what we as a church believe about the Bible and why we believe it, but something much more important is whether or not we believe what the Bible says. The Bible tells us that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." The Bible tells us that "the soul that sinneth; it shall die." The Bible tells us that "the wages of sin is death." The Bible also tells us that 'the gift of God is eternal life" and that this "life is in His Son." The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ died on the cross, shedding His precious blood, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day. The Bible tells us that "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Do you believe all of this? What have you done about it?