The Authority Of The Inspired Word Of God Series

Today we start a new series on foundations and there is nothing more foundational for believing in Christ than the understanding of the scriptures.

WE BELIEVE the Bible is the verbally inspired and only infallible (incapable of being wrong) and authoritative (having authority over beliefs and conduct) written Word of God (2 Timothy 3:15–17; 2 Peter 1:21).

One of the most important questions is: how can I know which religion is the true religion?

After all this is the one question that affects our eternal life. The bottom line, the real question comes down to a matter of authority.

When Speaking of authority there are three basic kinds of religious authority:

1. human reason

2. the church

3. God's word

Human Reason

Most common today we see in our culture is human reasoning. People will spend thousands of dollars to get a degree to say that they have the best type of human reasoning. There are classes on logic and logical fallacies. There are classes on how to argue and how to convince other people of different things. This is all human reasoning. We have taken and filled multiple buildings full of books to contain what we believe is human reasoning and we go back in time and research and study the ancient authors to better understand the roots of our human reasoning.

By itself there is nothing wrong with rationalization and logic the basics of human reasoning. These are things that are great to understand and be able to articulate and talk about but due to the nature of who we are when human authority becomes the ultimate authority we tend to take the place of God and try to be the authors of our own destiny and inevitably this ends in destruction and chaos. If you want proof just look at the world around us when people try to live out by their own means.

Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:9: History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.

This is true regardless of what is going on. Societies driven by humanistic values and culture have been around since the very beginning. It was at the tower of Babel they said “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.” Genesis 11:4

They wanted to show how great they were and had already forgotten about God, who in chapter 6 had just rescued Noah and his sons from a flood and had to start over. They forgot God’s plan and tried to live by by their own logic and so rationalization always ends with man putting themselves higher than everything else and ultimately destroying themselves.

Church Authority

There are certain denominations that believe in quote Apostolic success of authority in which they start with Peter as the original Bishop of the church that was ordained by Jesus and then they try to follow through the authority throughout the ages from Peter to justify the leader of this church. Most notably would be the Catholic Church who just elected their first American Pope and whom they claim has the ultimate authority on earth. The obvious problem with this however is that man again is flawed and there has been throughout history where the Pope was wrong in his judgment and when people tried to stand up and point out his issues they faced harsh punishments.

Many people today have told me that they have read scripture they like Jesus but they do not see Jesus represented in the church today and Christianity by itself is flawed. And I agree there is plenty of faults with Christianity as a whole and that's why it's important to find a Bible believing church which brings us to the final authority

The Authority of Scripture

This means to trust implicitly on the authority the word of God.

The authoritative rule states quote the scriptures, both old and New Testament, are verbally inspired of God and are the revelation of God to man, the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct.

When I talk about the authority of scripture, what I mean is this:

• Can we really trust the bible?

• How do we know that it is really God’s word?

• What benefit does it have to us?

You see, for something or someone to have authority there must be significant evidence that directs us to that conclusion. And what we find is that the Holy Scriptures prove themselves. They testify of themselves that they are God’s word, but the real proof comes in the evidence.

There are hundreds of prophecies in the bible and hundreds of them have already been fulfilled. And the amazing part is that they are fulfilled with acute accuracy. Where the Messiah would be born… where he would live… the type of man he would be… how he would die… that he would rise from the dead… that He is coming back… still waiting for that!