THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD
2 Peter 1:16-21 2 Tim 3:14-4:4
A few years ago the major division between professing Christians was over choice of denomination or doctrine.
Do you know what the major division between professing Christians is today?
The division is between those who believe the Bible is true, and those who do not.
The passage we are going to look at together this evening from 2 Timothy predicted this would happen: That those who believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God would become fewer in number, and would be looked down upon.
Without the assurance that the Bible IS the Word of God, and that every word of it is true,
there would be no certainty about the way of salvation, no promise of a home in Heaven,
and no standard to live by.
Any church that does not believe the Bible is the word of God, is nothing more than a social club.
Let me make one thing totally clear - everything we do as church is built upon the fact that the Bible is is the very Word of God
Everything we do is because we believe in the truth and act on the truth.
As a church, we are committed to being a
soul-winning, life-changing, bible-believing,
Spirit-filled church
and our final authority isn’t Elim headquarters in Malvern,
our final authority isn’t our church board,
our final authority isn’t even the Ministry team,
our final authority is the inerrant, infallible,
God-breathed book called the Bible…
so we need to know it’s accurate, and dependable!
That’s why we are looking at this passage today, because it contains great truths which will help us lay a foundation:
Lets get into the word: We are going to read from 2 Timothy 3:14-4:4
2 Timothy 3:14-17 (NIV) 14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 4:1-4 1In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
These verses answer the questions:
What does it matter? and Who cares if it’s true?
These verses tell us that: The Bible is inspired
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” 2 Timothy 3:16
Inspired means—“God-breathed”
Hopefully, right now, you are listening to my words, for me to form words I need breath…
my breath passes through my larynx,
out of my throat, and is articulated by my tongue and lips, it all starts with breath
Ken blows his clarinet, it makes a certain sound…he could take his same breath and blow it into a saxophone, or a tuba, and it would make an entirely different sound. (probably!).
In the same way, God breathed His inspired words into 40 different men through the years, and while they sound out in different tones, they all originated with the same source…the breath of God!
We’re talking about full inspiration
We’re not talking about “partial inspiration”…for it says, “all scripture…”
We’re not talking about “progressive revelation” …for the books of Job and Genesis, the most ancient of texts, are just as much inspired as the book of Revelation!
We believe in “verbal, plenary inspiration”, which means the very words are inspired, not just the concepts or thoughts.
You cannot have thoughts without words any more than you can have music without notes.
Jesus said in Matthew 4:4 “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by EVERY WORD that comes out of the mouth of God.”
So, we see inspiration… But the Bible is also, Instructive
The bible show us what is right
Look at 3:16—“useful for teaching”
There must be an absolute truth…
there has to be a final authority,
saying this is right and this is wrong.
Many preachers used to stand up and say,
“The Bible says…”
then the words changed to, “the church believes”
and today many would say, “it seems to me”
Let me be clear, you need to know what God has to say, my opinion is worthless!
The scriptures show us what is wrong “for rebuking”
And, how to get it right “for correction”
If you’re on the wrong path, the Bible will set you straight, and put your feet back on course!
And, how to stay right “for training in righteousness”
Your spiritual growth is measured, to a large degree, by how well you feed on the Bible.
The Bible is Inspired & Instructive
The Bible is the Word of God
The Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God
Many in society today hate the whole concept of absolute truth and absolute authority…
The whole political correctness and diversity message is shouted so loud because people love the attitude that “nobody’s gonna tell me what to do.”
Some despise God’s Word,
Some deny God’s Word
Some distort God’s Word - they twist it to say what they want,
Some dissect God’s Word - they cut out or ignore the parts they don’t like,
Some disregard God’s Word - it’s irrelevant, unimportant.
Friends as Christians we are not to
despise it / deny it / distort it / dissect it or disregard it…
but delight in it and defend it!
Dr. R.G. Lee said, “The Bible is a book above and beyond all other books…as a river is beyond a rivelet as the sun is beyond a candle in brightness as the wings of an eagle above the wings of a sparrow in strength…it is supernatural in origin, eternal in duration, inexpressible in value, immeasurable in influence, infinite in scope, divine in authorship, human in penmanship, regenerative in power, infallible in authority, universal in interest, personal in application, and inspired in totality! The Bible is the book that has walked more paths, travelled more highways, knocked on more doors, spoken to more people in their mother tongue, than any other book has ever known, or ever will know.”
Let’s look at some of the facts about the Bible.
Our faith is not based on fable, it’s based on fact.
Believing the Bible isn’t a leap into the darkness, it’s a step into the light!
There is External evidence & Internal Evidence
There are 3 external evidences that this book is truly a miracle book:
1. The miracle of it’s origination
This book is really a library of books…66 in all.
These 66 books were written over a period of 1600 years.
They were written by 40 different men,
from 13 different countries and 3 different continents…and yet it all comes together as a literary masterpiece, with one central theme.
That’s a miracle…with a divine Author overseeing the whole thing!
Those 40 men came from a variety of backgrounds: doctors, fishermen, shepherds, soldiers, kings, princes
some were rich, some were poor, educated, uneducated.
The Bible covers a variety of subjects:
The origin of the universe, creation of man, beginning of sin, divine principles of government,
the rise and history of Israel,
the incarnation of Christ, the institution of the church, and the evangelism of the world.
Yet, with all of this variety, with all of these colours making its light, with a thousand threads weaving its tapestry, there is one theme from beginning to end: Jesus Christ, and the redemption of mankind.
Needless to say…this book is a miracle
2. The miracle of its preservation
No less amazing than the Bible’s origination, is it’s preservation.
The Bible is not the “book of the month”, it’s the book of the Ages!!!
No book has been the object of more attacks or more scorn than the Bible.
No book has ever been despised and rejected like the Word of God.
It’s been burned / ridiculed / outlawed, but amazingly, the more it is attacked, the more it multiplies!
The philosopher Voltaire in his day said, “in 100 years the Bible will be a forgotten book, only to be found in museums.”
Well 100 years later, Voltaire was dead, and his house was purchased by the Geneva Bible Society for the printing and distribution of Bibles!
John Cummings said, “the empire of Caesar is gone, but the Word of God still survives,
the legions of Rome are moulding in the dust,
but the Word of God still survives,
the avalanches that Napoleon heaped upon Europe have melted away, but the Word of God still survives,
the pride of the Pharoahs has fallen, but the Word of God still survives.
Tradition has dug for it a grave.
Many a Judas has betrayed it with a kiss.
Many a Demas has forsaken it, but the Bible still survives!”
The Bible is a miracle in it’s origination…it’s preservation…in The miracle of it’s circulation
No book has been circulated like the Bible.
By far the No 1 best seller of all time.
Many people have given their lives for the cause of circulating the Word of God.
The Gideons are just 1 organization doing this, and each year they distribute over 500 million Bibles worldwide…
Christians risk their lives to smuggle the Bible into countries whose leaders forbid it’s distribution
It’s sad that some of us don’t even carry ours to church.
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John Wycliffe gave his life to translating the Bible from Latin to English.
Wycliffe had spoken out against the pope that he was not infallible.
After his death, the church actually dug up his bones and burned them, and threw the ashes into the River Thames
The Bible is a miracle book…in it’s origination, preservation, circulation
That’s just the external evidence.
If the Bible is the Word of God, and we know that it is, then we are obligated to live by it.
Now the internal evidence
1. Scientific Accuracy
The Bible revealed scientific facts hundreds and thousands of years before science learned about them.
While it is true that the Bible is not primarily a science book, not a text book designed to speak to your mind, but rather a love letter to speak to your heart, we should remember that the God of salvation is the God of creation…and when the Bible does speak on scientific matters, it speaks with complete authority and absolute certainty and accuracy.
Every once in a while you’ll hear about modern science disagreeing with the Bible.
What should we do when this happens?
Be patient, and give science time to catch up! Science has always needed to catch up with the Bible.
Want Some examples?
Medicine:
As recently as 1600 doctors and scientists still believed that many ailments and diseases were a result of the human body having too much blood.
You know outside a Barber shop there is often a pole out front with a red and white stripe.
The red stripe used to signify that you could go there to be “bled”. Doctors would prescribe that you go to the barber to be bled!
When George Washington became ill, his doctors bled him 3 times, the 3rd time they removed so much blood he died!
But now, science knows, it’s the blood that fights diseases/brings nourishment/repairs tissue/promotes growth. If only they had read Leviticus 17:11, “the life of the flesh is in the blood.”
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In the 14th Century the black plague decimated the population in Europe, 1 in 4 people died!
It wasn’t the scientists or doctors who brought the plague under control, it was the church.
The church applied a principle to the situation that was unheard of in that day, but which we take for granted today…quarantine!
Leviticus 13:46 “As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.”
People in Moses’ day didn’t know anything about microbiology. They didn’t know what a germ or virus was! But God gave them the principle of quarantine.
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1800’s physician in Vienna named Semovice, in charge of a hospital there. Pregnant women were coming in for routine exams and immediately after examination, many of them were dying of infection.
Semovice noticed that doctors were entering the examination area from all other areas of the hospital, including the morgue, without washing their hands.
He made it a rule that hands had to be washed and the doctors said “this is ridiculous, it will slow us down!”
The medical field today knows to wash up, but only because science has caught up with the Bible in this area.
Thousands of years ago, Moses wrote in Numbers 19:14-19 of the importance of quarantine, washing with water, changing clothes and the time interval for bacteria to die.
How did Moses know these things?
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God.”
So far we’ve been looking at the medical field, and all the verses written down by Moses.
Where was Moses from? Egypt!
Egypt was the leader in the medical trade in those days. The ancient Egyptians were considered to be brilliant in the area of medicine.
Archaeologists found a medical book in 1855, “Papyrus Eburs”: a comprehensive book containing virtually all the medical info they had in the time in which Moses lived.
Some of the information was a little odd:
“to prevent the hair from turning gray, you anoint your head with the blood of a black cat boiled in oil, or with the fat of a rattlesnake”
baldness: “apply a mixture of 6 fats, namely those of the snake, to strengthen it, anoint with the tooth of a donkey, crushed in honey.”
Another cure: (soak head in persimmon juice it won’t grow hair, but will shrink your head to fit the hair you’ve got!
Other remedies include donkey’s dung/lizard’s blood/swines teeth/rotten meat/moisture from pig’s ears/ and fly poo (hard to collect!)
This is from the brilliant ancient egyptians, in whose schools Moses was educated.
I’m glad in Moses’ writings we don’t find these instructions!
I’m glad that when you read the dietary code/sanitary code Moses wrote down, you find the highest standards anywhere, and without medical contradiction…why?
Because all scripture is given by inspiration!
Astronomy:
We take for granted that the earth is suspended in space, hanging from nothing.
Ancient egyptians believed and taught that the earth was supported by 5 marble pillars.
Greeks believed earth rested on the shoulders of the god Atlas.
Hindus believed earth rested on the backs of elephants, when they shook, that was an earthquake…and the elephants rested on the back of a huge tortoise, which was on top of a coiled serpent in the midst of a cosmic sea.
Aren’t you glad you don’t read that foolishness in the Bible!
Job said in the oldest of Biblical writings:
Job 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.
That was a radical thought until just a few hundred years ago. How did Job know that perhaps 8,000 years ago?
All scripture is given by inspiration!
Nobody believed the earth was round until 1492. “Columbus, you’re gonna sail off the end of the earth…but 700 years before Christ, Isaiah 40:22 said that “God He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.”
150 B.C., Astronomer named Hipparchus laid down his pencil and smiled, “it’s done”! He believed he had counted all the stars in the sky. 1,022!
That was the number used in Universities for 250 years.
Then Ptolemy came along and laughed, 1,022, that’s ridiculous, there’s 1,026! He found 4 more! And that was science for 1,300 years.
Then Galileo came along with his invention, the first crude telescope, he looked thru it for the first time, and gasped. We know now that there are billions and billions of stars in each of the galaxies, which are innumerable!
What did God say in the Bible say long before any of them were even born?
“Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.”
Science has always needed to catch up with the Bible.
Science is not the only witness we call to the stand tonight, also the witness of history:
2 Historical Accuracy:
Not a history book, but it is “His Story”.
And historians have always needed to catch up with the Bible.
The Bible records the fact that Moses wrote the first 5 books of the Bible, and Jesus verified that in the New Testament.
For many years, unbelieving historians laughed at the thought that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. ‘that’s impossible’, they said, for there was no written language when Moses lived!
Archaeologists continued their work, and in 1887 in N. Egypt 300 clay tablets were unearthed, we know them as the “tel-el-armana” tablets.
What were they?
Letters and business transactions between Egypt and palestine, dated centuries before Moses was even born.
And now it has been proven they had a written language, and they had a postal service! (it might have been quicker than the one we’ve got today!)
Remember the story in the book of Daniel of Belshazzar seeing the handwriting on the wall?
For centuries historians mocked that story as mythology, stating that they have the Babylonian records, which show that the last king of Babylon was NOT Belshazzar, but was Nabonitis.
As a matter of fact, they said, we have no record anywhere that any Belshazzar ever lived!
One day a clay tablet was found by archaeologists which revealed the truth: Nabonitis was the father of Belshazzar, and they were co-regents, ruling together!
Nabonitis traveled the world, his son ruled the kingdom. Now we have a better understanding of Daniel 5:16 “Now I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.”
What if that tablet had never been found?
Should we doubt the Bible, no! But isn’t it wonderful how God makes His truth known.
Late 1800’s/early 1900’s Sir William Ramsey was a well-known archaeologist and historian.
He was professor of humanities at Aberdeen University. He was considered to be the world’s most imminent scholar on Asia-Minor, and it’s geography and history.
He read the book of Acts and said,
“the book of Acts is a highly imaginative and carefully coloured account of primitive Christianity” (in essence, “of my knowledge of history, I have no respect for Luke as a historian”)
Then he went to the middle east for the express purpose of proving the Bible wrong in its history. He came home and wrote the book, “Luke, the beloved physician” in which he proclaimed Dr. Luke to be one of the worlds foremost historians.
Here’s a quote from Sir William Ramsey…this was after looking carefully at the evidence:
“I take the view that Luke’s history is unsurpassed in its trustworthiness. You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian, and they will stand the keenest scrutiny, and the harshest treatment.”
History is still catching up with the Bible and Science is too
Scientific Accuracy…Historical Accuracy
Finally, consider the 3rd category:
Prophetic Accuracy
No book in history has dared to predict the future the way the Bible has. For the sake of time, let’s narrow it down to just the prophecies that dealt with the coming of Christ, 2000 years ago.
There are over 300 direct prophecies in question, like,
Is. 7:14 He would be born of a virgin Lk. 1:7 it happened!
Micah 5:2 born in Bethlehem Lk. 2:4 that happened!
Gen. 49:10 born of tribe of Judah Mt. 3:3 happened!
Psalm 78:2 speak in parables Mt. 13:34 that happened!
Zech. 9:9 ride on colt of a donkey Mt. 21 that happened!
Is. 61 heal broken-hearted Lk. 4:18 that happened!
Is. 53:3 rejected by own Jn. 1:11 that happened!
Is. 53:7 stand silent before accusers Mk. 15:5 that happened!
Ps. 22:18 cast lots for His robe Jn. 19:23 that happened!
Ps. 22 (hundreds of years before crucifixion ever invented or thought of) prophets said they would pierce His hands and feet, and it happened!
Ps. 22:1 “my God, why forsaken me?” Mt. 27:46 that happened!
Zech. 11:2 sold by enemies for 30 pieces of silver Mt. 26:15 that happened!
Is. 53:9 buried with rich Mt. 27 that happened!
One skeptic said, “certainly this is the most striking coincidence of details.”
It’s more than just a coincidence, it’s evidence that demands a verdict!
Dr. Charles Ryrie points out that, by the law of chance, it would require 2 hundred billion earths, each populated with four billion people, to come up with one person who could achieve one hundred accurate prophecies without any errors in sequence. But, in Christ’s coming alone, there were not one hundred, but over 300 prophecies fulfilled! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the prophecies dealing with His first coming!
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The Bible:
It’s salvation to the sinner
sanctification to the saint
sufficient to the suffering
satisfying to the scholar
It’s so deep the scholar can swim in it for a lifetime without ever touching bottom,
yet so simple, a child can approach it for a drink, without fear of drowning!
I love it’s depth, but the greatest truth I’ve ever learned is this:
Jesus loves me this I know,
for the Bible tells me so!
