Introduction:
A. The story is told of a collector of rare books who encountered a man and began to talk about books.
1. The man told the collector that he had just thrown away an old Bible that he found in a dusty, old box and he mentioned that “Guten-somebody-or-other” had printed the Bible.
2. “Not Gutenberg?” gasped the collector. “Yes, I’m pretty sure that was it!,” said the man.
3. “How could you be so foolish,” said the collector, “You've thrown away one of the first books ever printed. A copy like that recently sold at auction for half a million dollars!”
4. “Oh, I don't think this book would have been worth anything close to that much,” replied the man. “It was scribbled all over in the margins by some guy named Luther.”
B. We can be pretty certain that this little story is not a true story, because I don’t think anyone would be that unfamiliar with famous names like Gutenberg and Martin Luther.
1. Obviously a rare book like that has tremendous monetary value, but I want to declare to you today that any copy of the Bible has more value than a pile of money.
2. I believe the Bible is the Word of God, it contains the very words of life – eternal life.
3. King David, the OT Psalmist wrote: The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold. (Ps. 119:72) Is that the way you feel about the Bible?
4. Today, I want us to discuss the place and purpose of the Bible for Christians and the church.
C. As you know, we are in a series called “Blueprint: God’s Plan for the Church.”
1. I have been emphasizing that we are trying to be Christians only, who are a part of the New Testament church that Jesus built.
2. The church Jesus built has stood the test of time, and has overcome every attack of the evil one.
3. In every time and place, the church of Jesus has had to face the opposition of false teaching.
4. I’ve tried to emphasize that our fellowship of churches has striven to be the simple church of the New Testament and that alone.
5. We are committed to holding no other belief, nor practice any other rite than that which the NT church believed or practiced as found in the Bible.
6. For that reason we have looked to the Bible as our sole source of truth and instruction.
D. Today, I want us to explore our attitudes toward the Bible by answering three questions:
1. How and when was the canon of the Bible put together?
2. What is Biblical Authority?
3. How do we know that the Bible is the Word of God?
I. How and When was the canon of the Bible put together?
A. The Bible, as we have it today, leather-bound with 66 books, 39 OT and 27 NT, didn’t come from heaven in that form.
1. Rather, it came from God, little by little, over hundreds of years, and was not complete until the end of the 1st century A.D.
2. The term “canon” is used to describe the books that are divinely inspired and therefore belong in the Bible.
3. The primary difficulty of determining the biblical canon is that the Bible does not give us a list of the books that belong in the Bible.
a. Nowhere in the Bible do we read, “And here is a list of the books that belong in the Bible.”
4. Determining the canon was a process conducted first by Jewish rabbis and scholars and later by early Christians.
5. But we must keep in mind that, ultimately, it was God who decided what books belonged in the biblical canon.
6. A book of Scripture belonged in the canon from the moment God inspired its writing.
7. After that, it was simply a matter of God convincing His human followers which books should be included in the Bible.
B. Compared to the New Testament, there was much less controversy over the canon of the OT.
1. Hebrew believers recognized God’s messengers and accepted their writings as inspired of God.
2. While there was undeniably some debate in regards to the Old Testament canon, some scholars suggest it was fixed by 140 B.C. while others suggest a date as late as A.D. 250.
3. Outside the Torah and the Prophets, the canonization of other books, especially the Apocrypha (which I will talk about in a minute), were debated until as late as the 3rd century A.D.
C. For the NT, the process of recognition began in the first centuries of the Christian church.
1. Immediately, Peter recognized Paul’s writings as Scripture (2 Peter 3:15-16).
2. The letters of Paul to churches and individuals were certainly accepted as the Word of God.
3. Clement of Rome mentioned at least eight New Testament books (A.D. 95).
4. Polycarp, a disciple of John the apostle, acknowledged 15 books (A.D. 108).
5. Later, Irenaeus mentioned 21 books (A.D. 185).
6. The NT books experiencing the most controversy were Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John.
D. The first official NT “canon” list was the Muratorian Canon, which was compiled in AD 170 and included all of the New Testament books except Hebrews, James, and 3 John.
1. The Council of Hippo (AD 393) and the Council of Carthage (AD 397) affirmed the complete 27 books of the NT as authoritative.
2. The councils followed something similar to the following principles to determine whether a New Testament book was truly inspired by the Holy Spirit:
a. Was the author an apostle or have a close connection with an apostle?
b. Is the book being accepted by the body of Christ at large?
c. Did the book contain consistency of doctrine and orthodox teaching?
d. Did the book bear evidence of high moral and spiritual values that would reflect a work of the Holy Spirit?
E. Perhaps you have heard about the Apocrypha or the Deuterocanonical books.
1. Roman Catholic Bibles have several more books in the Old Testament than Protestant Bibles.
2. These books are referred to as the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books.
3. The word apocrypha means “hidden,” while the word deuterocanonical means “second canon.”
4. The Apocrypha/Deuterocanonicals were written primarily in the time between the OT and NT.
5. Not all of the Apocryphal books are included in Catholic Bibles.
6. The nation of Israel treated the Apocryphal books with respect, but never accepted them as true books of the Hebrew Bible.
7. The early Christian church debated the status of the Apocrypha / Deuterocanonicals, but few early Christians believed they belonged in the canon of Scripture.
8. The New Testament quotes from the Old Testament hundreds of times, but nowhere quotes or alludes to any of the Apocryphal books.
9. There are many proven errors and contradictions in the Apocrypha, and the Apocryphal books teach many things that are not true and are not historically accurate.
11. While many Catholics accepted the Apocrypha previously, the Roman Catholic Church officially added the Apocrypha to their Bible at the Council of Trent in the mid 1500’s A.D., primarily in response to the Protestant Reformation.
12. Due to the historical and theological errors found in these books, they must be viewed as fallible historical and religious documents, not as the inspired, authoritative Word of God.
F. There is another class of books called the pseudepigrapha (sue-da-pig-rafa) and they are books that attempt to imitate Scripture but were written under false names.
1. The pseudepigraphical books were written anywhere from 200 BC to AD 300.
2. They are spurious works written by unknown authors who attempted to gain a readership by tacking on the name of a famous biblical character.
3. While the pseudepigrapha may be of interest to students of history and ancient religious thought, they are not inspired by God and therefore are not part of the canon of Scripture.
G. Again, it is crucial to remember that neither the church nor the councils determined the canon.
1. It was God, and God alone, who determined which books belonged in the Bible.
2. It was simply a matter of God imparting to His followers what He had already decided.
3. The human process of collecting the books of the Bible was flawed, but God, in His sovereignty, and despite our ignorance and stubbornness, brought the early church to the recognition of the books He had inspired.
4. We can put our faith in the Bible we have today, knowing God inspired it and preserved it.
II. What is Biblical Authority?
A. If a person says that they believe that the Bible is divinely inspired and totally truthful, then they must also give it absolute authority, right?
1. Any approach to the subject of biblical authority must begin with God Himself.
2. God’s authority is based on who and what God is.
3. God is His own authority. There is nothing outside Him on which His authority is established.
B. Authority is the right or power to command obedience or belief.
1. God’s sovereign, universal, and eternal reign over the entire universe reveals His authority.
2. God establishes His purposes in time and does all things according to His will.
3. His providential direction over the events of history demonstrates His authority.
C. Men and women are creations of the self-revealing, eternal God.
1. Since He has created humankind, life’s meaning is found in a relationship with God.
2. God exercises authority over His creation; and God’s people respond to His authority in obedience and worship.
3. Although God communicates His authority in nature and history, and through human conscience and experience, He primarily communicates His authority through the Bible.
4. Of course, God has also revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ (Jn 1:1-18; Heb 1:1-3).
D. The Bible pictures Jesus’ authority in terms of acting on behalf of God the Father.
1. As the obedient Son of God, Jesus followed the Word of God revealed in the Scriptures and acknowledged and appealed to the Scriptures’ authority (Matthew 4:1-11; John 10:33-36).
2. Jesus declared that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Him (Mt 28:18).
3. Jesus’ authority is exercised over the church as the Head of the church.
4. And Jesus’ authority is expressed through His personal ambassadors, the apostles.
5. In this way the apostles serve as the foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20-3:5).
6. In fulfillment of Christ’s promises (John 14:26; 16:13), the apostles were led into all truth through the Holy Spirit, and apostles’ authority has been placed permanently in their writings.
E. The Bible, then, is the Book of God’s truth.
1. Because it is inspired by God, it carries the authority of God, and is, therefore, our final authority in all things that pertain to life and godliness. (2 Tim. 3:16-17)
2. From the beginning to the end of the Bible, we are told that it is our duty to obey God – Fear God and keep His commands for this is the whole duty of man. (Eccl. 12:13)
3. We are commanded not to stray from God’s commands - So be careful to do what the LORD your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. (Deut. 5:32)
4. We are commanded not to add to nor take anything away from the Word of God (Dt. 12:32; Rev. 22:18-19)
5. Since the very creation of humankind, Satan has been trying to discredit the Word of God and has been trying to keep us from obeying the commands of God (Gen. 3).
6. But our goal and our job should be to know and follow the Word of God to the best of our knowledge and ability.
7. Paul wrote: Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Tim. 2:15)
8. So we see that the Bible must be our authority and that we are blessed when we obey it.
III. How Do We Know the Bible is the Word of God?
A. As you know, there are many books or writings that are looked to for spiritual direction.
1. In addition to the Bible, there is the Koran (the Islam holy book), the Book of Morman, the Hindus believe the Bhagavad Vita is the source of eternal truth. other people look to the writings of Confucius, or to L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology).
2. So what sets the Bible apart from all these and other books and writings?
3. Can we be sure that the Bible is unique and different from all the rest? I believe that we can.
B. What evidence is there that supports the belief that the Bible is the Word of God?
1. I like what C.H. Spurgeon said after being asked if he could defend the Bible, he said: “Defend it! I would as soon defend a lion. Let it out, it can defend itself.”
2. Let’s allow the Bible to defend itself by looking at the evidence for the divine authorship, and that evidence falls into two major categories: internal evidence and external evidence.
C. Let’s start with the Internal Evidence that the Bible Truly is the Word of God
1. The first piece of internal evidence is its’ claim of divine origin.
a. It might surprise you to know that there are relatively few books that claim divine origin.
b. One would expect that a book written by God would claim divine origin, but just making that claim does not make it so.
c. The Bible claims to be divinely inspired and to contain the very words of God.
d. Nearly 4000 times, expressions like “Thus says the Lord,” and “The word of the Lord came to me” are recorded in the Bible.
e. In 2 Tim. 3, Paul speaks of the Bible being inspired by God: 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
f. The Apostle Peter explained something of the inspiration process when he wrote: 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).
g. So this is an important first piece of evidence. We would not even consider the Bible to be the Word of God if it didn’t claim a divine origin.
2. A second piece of internal evidence is the unity of the Bible.
a. The Bible was written by 40 different people over a period of 1600 years and yet the Bible doesn’t contradict itself, rather it presents a singular message or theme.
b. Such a miracle can only be explained by there being one divine Author, God himself, who was in control of all these human writers.
c. These 40 different authors lived in different times separated by hundreds of years, they wrote in 3 different languages, and were on three different continents.
d. The Biblical writers came from many different walks of life; including kings and philosophers, fisherman and tax collectors, doctors and prophets, and herdsmen.
e. But the perfect unity of the Bible, organized around the one theme of God’s redemption of humankind and of all creation could never have come about except by the hand of God.
f. So the unity of the Bible is just another important proof of divine inspiration.
3. A third piece of internal evidence is the fulfilled prophesy of the Bible.
a. Hundreds of prophecies of future events are recorded in the Bible – some of them were written hundreds or even a thousand years before their fulfillment.
b. No other book in history has dared to predict the future to the degree the Bible has and amazingly, Biblical prophesies are batting 1000! That’s a perfect record.
c. The prophecies in the Bible are very specific and accurate.
d. Nostradamus claims to have made hundreds of prophecies that have come true, but if you look at his prophecies, you find them to be vague and unclear, not like biblical prophesies.
e. One of the more convincing biblical prophesies was made by Isaiah.
1. The prophet Isaiah foretold that a Persian king named Cyrus would take over the kingdom of Babylon and most of the rest of the known world at the time.
2. This same man, Isaiah said, would decide to allow the Jewish exiles in his empire to return to rebuild the city of Jerusalem (Isaiah 44:28; 45:1; and 45:13).
3. Isaiah made this prophecy 150 years before Cyrus was born, 180 years before Cyrus performed any of these feats, and 110 years before Jerusalem was destroyed (therefore needing to be rebuilt) and before the Jews were taken into captivity.
4. Amazingly, king Cyrus would accomplish these noble tasks even though he did not “know” Jehovah God (45:4, 5). He was not Jewish nor a believer in God.
f. In the OT, there are over 300 prophecies made about the Messiah and Jesus fulfilled them.
1. These prophecies were made hundreds of years before Jesus came, and they were things he could not have fulfilled just by knowing about them.
2. The prophecies include the place of his birth (Bethlehem), the tribe he would be from (Judah), how he would die, and that he would be crucified between thieves.
g. The verifiable track record of prophetic fulfillment is another convincing internal proof for the truthfulness of the Bible.
D. Let’s turn our attention to the external evidence that the Bible truly is the Word of God.
1. The first piece of external evidence is the Bible’s indestructibility.
a. The Bible is the most well-known book in the history of the world, and no book has been attacked more than it.
b. In A.D. 303, Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered all Bibles be burned, but his effort failed.
c. Voltaire, the French enlightenment writer bragged, “It took twelve men to start Christianity. One will destroy it.” Voltaire failed.
1. Voltaire said, “In 100 years the Bible will be a forgotten book, only to be found in museums. 100 years later, Voltaire was dead, and his house was purchased by the Geneva Bible Society the for printing and distribution of Bibles.
d. The American Revolutionary Thomas Paine wrote, “Fifty years hence the Bible will be obsolete and forgotten.” He wrote that in 1795, but he was wrong!
e. And so the Bible’s indestructability is a piece of evidence supporting its divine origin and divine protection.
2. A second piece of external evidence is the Bible’s reliability.
a. Because skeptics have failed to rid the world of the Bible, they have tried to discredit and destroy the authority of the Bible.
b. The Bible has gone through every kind of scrutiny possible, from archaeology, science, philosophy and computers, yet despite all the attacks, the Bible proves itself over and over.
c. Many skeptics believe that the Bible cannot be trusted because the original manuscripts – those documents actually written by Matthew, Isaiah, Paul, etc. – do not exist.
1. This is certainly a good point – the original autographs, penned by the authors of the Bible, are indeed no longer available – they disappeared many centuries ago.
2. But we must understand that the originals of other ancient writings, such as those by Plato, Aristotle, and Caesar have also been lost or destroyed long ago.
3. We only have copies of all the great, ancient writings; we don’t have any originals.
d. To judge the accuracy of ancient documents, experts look at a number of important factors; including, how close in age they come to the original, how many copies there are, and how close the content of the copies are to one another. This is a science of its own.
1. With most of the ancient writings, relatively few copies are available and the time span between the original and the oldest copy is great.
2. Works of Plato: 7 copies exist, the closest to the original is 1,200 years removed.
3. Works of Aristotle: 37 copies exist, time span 1,400 years.
4. How does the New Testament compare? We have almost 25 thousand copies and there is only an 80 year span between the original and the oldest copy!
5. Furthermore, we have a fragment of the gospel of John that dates back to around 29 years from the original writing (John Rylands Papyri 125 A.D.).
e. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948, which are the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament ever found, confirmed that the scribes who painstakingly copied the Bible did so with the utmost of care and accuracy.
3. A third piece of external evidence is the Bible’s historical and archaeological accuracy.
a. The Bible is historically correct, and no one has ever proved it otherwise.
b. Nelson Glueck, a renouned Jewish archaeologist, states, “No archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.”
4. I want to conclude with one final piece of external evidence – it is what I call the dynamic impact of the Bible.
a. The difference that the Bible makes in the lives of those who sincerely seek to apply its message points to its divine origin.
b. The Bible says this about itself: 12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Heb. 4:12).
c. The apostle Paul said: “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” (Acts 20:32)
d. The Bible’s power and authority is unlike any other book ever written.
e. Countless lives have been transformed by the supernatural power of God’s Word.
Conclusion:
A. The journalist Terry Anderson was kidnapped by Shiite Muslim fundamentalists back in March of 1985 and was held captive for 6 ½ years.
1. In the first weeks of his captivity, his captors gave him a Bible.
2. During the ensuing 6 ½ years he read it more than 50 times from cover to cover.
3. Here is his testimony about the Bible, “I found consolation and counsel in the Bible. Not other-world, ‘this is just a test’ kind of consolation, but comfort from the real, immediate voices of people who had suffered greatly and in ways that seem so close to what I was going through.”
B. We can easily relate to the people of the Bible and the message of the Bible.
1. The primary and simple message of the Word of God is “God made you and loves you and wants the best for you.”
2. The Creator who made us, and has all authority in heaven and on earth, wants us to know the truth of His love and to find the abundant and eternal life He offers through faith and obedience.
3. Today I hope all of us will take that message very personally, it will change our lives!
4. I also hope that all of us will give the Bible the authority and place it deserves in our lives.
