A New England high school teacher taught a course entitled The Bible as Literature. Only seniors in the top 10 percent of the class could take this course. A pre-test was given to evaluate the students’ biblical knowledge. One student defined the Epistles as "wives of the Apostles." A pastor was so humored by this answer that he shared it during his next sermon. One of the church members approached him afterwards and asked, "If the Epistles weren’t the wives of the Apostles, whose wives were they?"
Kind of a humorous story, but it begs the question of us—what do we know? What do we believe?
Today, we are going to start looking at what we believe. In your notes, the very first paragraph says, “We believe in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, verbally and plenarily inspired, and the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice.”
You may be thinking, “Oh, great. He’s going to try and wow us with big theological words and confuse us.” Reminds me of a story.
An inexperienced seminary graduate went to a church in hopes of becoming their next pastor. Figuring he’d impress them with his brilliance, he preached on the attributes of God, using as many theological terms as he could find in his books. He mispronounced a few of them, but figured none of the people would know the difference. This became most evident when a little old lady met him at the back door. She scolded, "Young man, I don’t care what you say, I still believe in God!"
But it is important to know what we believe. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.
If we don’t know what we believe, then the passage in Ephesians 4 will apply to us where Paul wrote, “14Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.”
Instead, we find that we are more like the people in this story, a true story:
A pastor entered a class as the lesson was in progress and asked, "Who broke
down the walls of Jericho?" A lad answered, "Not me, sir." The pastor turned
to the teacher and asked, "Is this the usual behavior in this class?" The
teacher replied, "I believe this boy is an honest boy, and I really don’t
think he did it." Leaving the room, the pastor sought out a deacon and explained what had happened. The deacon said, "I have known both the boy and
the teacher for several years, and neither of them would do such a thing." By
this time the pastor was heartsick and reported the incident to the Christian
Education Committee. They said, "We see no point in making an issue out of
this thing. Let’s pay the bill for the damage to the walls and charge it to
upkeep. Anyway, our insurance may even cover it. "
It’s important to know what we believe, because what we believe will affect the way we live our lives. This morning, I want to look at that statement, “We believe in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, verbally and plenarily inspired, and the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice.”
Let’s break down that statement, looking first at the phrase, “verbally and plenarily inspired.”
What does that phrase mean? Verbally means “words”. Plenary means “all”. That phrase means that we believe the Bible, all of the words, is inspired.
Where do we get that from? It’s not just something we’ve pulled out of the air and said, “This is what we believe,” is it? Well, let’s take a look at why we believe in the verbal, plenary inspiration of scripture.
First, we believe it because the Bible says it is true.
2 Timothy 3:16-17, which George read for us earlier, tells us that all Scripture is inspired by God. It literally means, “God-breathed” (NIV translation), that this is the text that God breathed through human authors.
2 Peter shows us the process by which this happens: “20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
God’s Word is God-breathed. It was inspired by him, created by him, given to US! Remember what Jesus said when he was tempted in the wilderness? “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” That’s from Deuteronomy 8:3. Remember what we have been talking about the past few Sundays, how we have everything we need for life and godliness? Man does live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. What has come from the mouth of God? (HOLD UP BIBLE) God’s Word. What do we tend to live on? Everything else.
We also believe that God used the human author to help convey His words to us. He used the author’s language, style, even background to give us His Word. Some people believe that God dictated, and that man just wrote exactly what he heard God say. Now some of scripture is exactly that, but also allowed for the style and background of the author.
Let me give you an example that we would understand today. I was drinking a diet Pepsi yesterday. Technically, that is a carbonated beverage with aspartame rather than sugar. Practically speaking, what is the general word that we use to describe that? We call it, “soda”. Now, what do they call it in the mid-west? “Pop”. Which term is correct? They both are, because in the context of that culture and region, they are called different things.
How does this fit into God using human authors? Well, suppose God wanted to add another book to the Bible based on today’s culture (BY THE WAY, I DO NOT BELIEVE GOD IS DOING THIS AT ALL!—SCRIPTURE IS FINISHED!). If God wanted the human author to write about someone drinking a diet Pepsi, God would not dictate the usage of the term, carbonated beverage with aspartame rather than sugar. Instead, he would allow the author’s language, style and background come through, and if he were writing here in NEPA, it would be soda, or if it were in the Midwest, it would be pop.
Just like how you pronounce the word, W-A-T-E-R. If you pronounce it the way my mother does, wooder, you would accurately guess that she is from New Jersey/New York area. Just like there are different phrases and styles of languages today, there were back then, and God used the phrases and styles of those writers to breathe His Word.
You see, it’s not just the thoughts of the bible that were inspired, it’s the words, and it’s not just any words, but ALL OF THEM.
You may be thinking, Pastor James, okay, I believe the Old Testament is inspired, since that is obviously what Paul was referring to, but what about the New Testament? It wasn’t even completed by then!
Glad you asked. Let me explain. We accept the writings of the apostles, because of Christ’s words to them. John 14: 25"All this I have spoken while still with you. 26But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
John 16: 12"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. 15All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.
So we take the Apostles writings as Scripture, because of what Christ said. What about Paul? He was not there in that upper room. So what about him, since he wrote so much of the New Testament? Let’s look at what Peter had to say about Paul. 2 Peter 3: 15Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
The phrase, the other Scriptures, refers to another of the same kind. In that sense, Peter is calling Paul’s letters to be Scripture.
Okay, so maybe you’re thinking about Luke and the book of Acts. You see, Luke wasn’t an apostle either. So, how did he get to be included here? Well, Paul quotes from his gospel. In 1 Timothy 5: 18For the Scripture says, "Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,"[2] and "The worker deserves his wages.”
Do not muzzle the ox comes from Deuteronomy. The worker deserves his wages comes from Luke 10:7.
We believe that the scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, are all inspired by God.
But you know, some people want to destroy this book. A computer program was recently used to prove that St. Paul is the author of only 4 of the 13 epistles attributed to him in the New Testament. Two researchers fed the computer a quarter of a million words of Greek prose to reach this conclusion. They said the method could be used to determine the authorship of any part of the Bible. Truly amazing, isn’t it, that a mindless machine questions the Word of God?! If its findings were correct, they would make Paul a liar, for he claims the authorship of all 13 epistles. Just think, a lifeless mechanism "proving" that the Bible is not true! The computer is now a disputer. Now for the clincher. The same computer program was used to do an analysis of the book in which these conclusions were written. It was proven that the man who wrote the book couldn’t have been its author.
But not only do we believe that the Bible is inspired, but that it is inerrant. In other words, the Bible, when correctly interpreted is entirely true and never false in all it affirms, whether it is on the subject of doctrine, ethics, history, social, physical, or life sciences.
Notice I said, when correctly interpreted. I’m not talking about looking at every word in a figurative sense, but I am talking about putting everything in it’s proper context. For example, Ecclesiastes is a great book, but if you take it at its face value , you will start to believe somethings that God’s word does not teach. When we correctly interpret it, and understand it is being written from a point of view of a man desperately trying to rationalize through the depression of life, then we can see where he is coming from.
Why do we know that God’s word is inerrant? Well, if we believe that it is inspired, that is a natural outflow of that. John 17
17Sanctify[1] them by the truth; your word is truth.
Now maybe you are thinking about all of these translations. You start to wonder, “If God’s word is inspired, all of the words, and if the Bible is without error, then why are there all of these translations?”
That’s a good question. Let me tell you. Inspiration and inerrancy only apply to the original manuscript. In other words, the paper used in the first writing of scripture—those are the words that were inspired and without error.
I’m going to tell you a fact that may or may not be shocking—we do not have the original manuscripts, those original papers. We have copies upon copies of copies, but not the originals.
Now before you start panicking, let me tell you that you can be assured that you are holding God’s Word. Here’s why. Let’s say that we were going to do an experiment. All of us are going to write out Psalm 119. All 176 verses of it. After we’ve hand-written it down, we’ll collect them all, and compare them, and look for differences. See how they come together. Do you think it would match up perfectly? Of course not. Some of us will get words mixed up, some of us will mis-spell, even though we have the text right in front of us. Some of us will write sloppy, and it will be hard to understand some of it. Now, after we get it all together, what would you think would be a good percentage for correctness? In other words, after we have ______ or so copies of the same passage and got them together, what percentage of it would match up with each other? If we were good, maybe 90%, 95%? I want you to know, that matching up all of the copies that we have (and of the NT, we have over 5,000 copies of various sections of the NT), that there is a 99% agreement among all of the copies? That is amazing! You want to know what the big problems within that one percent are? Missing the word, “THE”, or mixing up letters. What that means is that you have, in your hands, God’s written word.
The Bible Society of South Africa reports that in an early draft of their translation of the Bible into Southern Sotho (one of many South African dialects), the typesetter typed "jwala" (which means "beer") instead of "jwalo" (which is translated "so"). The result of Genesis 1:9 was, "And God said: ’Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place. . . . And it was beer.’"
Now, there is a lot more to this, and if you have questions, I would LOVE to sit down and talk with you about them, but for the purposes of today, we believe the bible is the inerrant word of God, verbally and plenarily inspired. But we also believe that the Bible is the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice.
A rare-book collector met a guy who said he’d just thrown out an old Bible that had been packed away for generations. "Somebody named Guten-something had printed it," the man explained.
"Not Gutenberg!" gasped the book collector. "You’ve just thrown away one of the most famous books every printed. One copy recently sold at auction for over $4 million!"
The other man was still unmoved. "My copy wouldn’t have brought a dime," he said. "Some guy named Martin Luther scribbled notes all over it."
-Tal D. Bonham
The practicality of it is simply this: IF WE BELIEVE THAT THIS IS GOD’S INERRANT, INSPIRED WORD, HOW CAN WE DO ANY LESS THEN SAY THAT IT IS THE ALL-SUFFICIENT RULE OF FAITH AND PRACTICE? We’ve looked at 2 Peter 1. How that we have the divine power for everything we need in life and godliness. Remember how I said that it’s a matter of whether we take God’s Word at His Word? That’s exactly what it is.
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.
We either believe it or we don’t. We as a church do; and what’s more important, it should affect every aspect of our lives. This (HOLD UP BIBLE), is God’s inerrant, inspired Word for US, given to us for all time. Let’s use it for what we say we will, the all sufficient rule for faith and practice. Let’s pray.
