The Inspiration of Scripture

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today, our topic is the inspiration of scripture. Can you guys see this? Okay, over here? I'll say the things out loud, so it shouldn't be too difficult, but we'll kind of reference stuff up here, and I'll write things down as we go. We're beginning this new book. Like I said, just taking one category at a time. So theology is just studying who God is. That's all it is. And so if you are a Christian, or even if some people aren't christians, they want to know more about God. They are studying theology. You read the Bible, which is God's revelation of himself, you are studying and reading theology. So it doesn't have to be this academic discipline, necessarily, where you only do this in seminary or a Bible college or something of the sort. This is just what christians do. We study who God is. We study theology. And we are doing it this way because studying it in categories is easier than just trying to understand everything the Bible teaches us about God. So some people call this systematic theology. That's the technical term, but it's just a category. So this first category is a subset of theology. So there's theology, and then there are these big categories. One would be the doctrine or the teaching about the word of God, about the Bible. And so the inspiration of scripture is another subset under that umbrella. So there's a lot we can know about the word, about the Bible. And this is one of those things that christians have believed since all time, since the inception of the faith. So that's what we're covering now. I believe that this is important because we want to know God better. We want to know God better. And by the way, if you don't have a Bible, we have some in the back. I think it would help you, as we will be reading, and I'll ask some of you guys to read throughout. So there's a bunch of them back there if you want to get one. Yeah. So we want to know the faith better. And so first we're studying this. It's always been believed. And historically, it's important, because this idea, this teaching, has been questioned many times in history, and when it has been questioned and set aside, truth has been lost. The truth of the gospel and who God is is lost when we lose the inspiration of scripture. So it's important. In fact, this happened pretty close to home. We're in a baptist church, part of the Southern Baptist convention. It's a large network of baptist churches, mostly in America, but all over the world. And there was a time in our history where this idea was lost. Our whole idea of what the word of God was lost and questioned. And if it weren't for people being faithful to this doctrine and to the word, our churches would look very, very different today. Very different. But it was recovered and it was reaffirmed as what we have always believed. And so we're going to go through some categories. Those are numbers 1234 and five to study this. But here is the main idea, and I have blanks up there. The main idea is that all scripture is breathed out by God. So I'm going to write that down. Breathed out by God. And we'll talk about what breathed out God breathing means, because the Holy Spirit, those are the next two blanks. The Holy Spirit. Here's a big word that we'll talk about. Superintended the biblical authors as they composed their writings. And then their writings are the last two blanks, the word of God. So what the spirit inspired and what the authors wrote themselves is the word of God. Let's tighten that up a little bit. And so we're going to study this main idea through these points first. We're going to deal with that first underlying term, God breathed or breathed out. And so point number one is God breathed. I'm hyphenating it because that's how we see it written out in our bibles. God breathed. So everyone flip to second Timothy three. That's in the New Testament, which is more towards the end of your bibles. There's a lot of little books in there. If you need to look it up in the front of your Bible and the contents, you can. But second Timothy, one of the letters of Paul written to Timothy. So we're going to go to second Timothy three. And I'm in first Timothy two, Timothy three. Can I get somebody to read verses 16 and 17? I can do that. Okay, thank you. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction. Thank you. Read that first phrase again. All scripture, all scripture is given by inspiration. Yes, given by inspiration. So that's one way it's translated. A lot of you might have. Mine says breathed out by God. There's nothing wrong with that translation because they're translating it into what it means. This word that Paul uses is a unique word that I believe was not. It wasn't commonly used or used at all. He wanted to describe how scripture was written, and so he uses this word that means inspired by God, of the very breath of God. That's kind of what he's saying. So the Bible comes from God's very breath. It is his very word. So we're seeing this very close connection, a very intimate connection between what you're holding in your hands and what God actually spoke, his actual words. Now, underneath this first point, you see three blanks. And I think you have. Yeah. You have that on your handouts. There are three specifics of the inspiration of scripture. We'll do one at a time. The first one is that inspiration is. I think you pronounce this word plenary. People might say it differently, but plenary is how we're going to say it. Inspiration is plenary. I'll tell you what this means, because this probably isn't in your everyday vocabulary, right? Does anyone say this word often? Caleb does. Okay. And Ezra, I'm not surprised. This means that it's holistic, it's complete. All of scripture is inspired. Not just the important parts, not just the parts that you like. It's also not just the controversial parts, so to speak. It is all of it. Every word is inspired. Why might this be important? I want to hear some answers. Why do you guys think the fact that it's all inspired is important? If it wasn't all inspired, then some. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Of it would be from man, right? [00:08:18] Speaker A: Yes. Some of it would be from man. Not a good thing, right? Yeah. Why would it not be a good thing? Levi? Yeah. People sin. So they might have written things sinfully or wrongly. Yeah. It's not as trustworthy. Maybe. Any other reasons? Yeah, yeah. It would make it not the word of God. Or at least some of it would be the word of God. Right? How would you know what part is the word of God? Yeah. So you're saying it would be mostly subtle cues to understand which parts. I think that's best case scenario is that you could find subtle cues to say, oh, well, this part's from God. This part's nothing. I think there's really no objective way. If you read through the Bible, if you just read two Timothy three, is all of that from God? Is some of it, is none of it. There's really no way to know for sure because people have tried this. They've tried to say, well, no, obviously these parts are good. These parts aren't. And yet all those people disagree on what parts are good and what parts aren't. Across cultures, people disagree about which parts are good and which parts aren't. So that's another reason. And you're hitting on it. I think that's really good. Nobody can pick and choose and we wouldn't be able to know anything. We would have no certainty. Even if we thought, okay, this part is almost certainly from God. You still wouldn't know for sure. You still couldn't know. And so in reality, you actually know absolutely nothing. Nothing is certain. That's why the plenary aspect is important. Second, inspiration is verbal. Verbal. This is to say that it's not just the thoughts. The Holy Spirit, God, the spirit did not just go into the minds of the authors and inspire them to think things and then completely separate from those thoughts. They just wrote what they wanted to. Instead, it is every word. Now, they did not write in English. It's true. They wrote in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Very little in Aramaic. What we just read in two Timothy was written in Greek. And so those words in their original language were what were inspired. And what we have is a very accurate translation of those words. But it is the words. When we read that all scripture is breathed out or written by inspiration, we are reading that all scripture is from God, not just the thoughts of the people that wrote scripture are from God. It is the scripture itself, the words itself that are from God. Every single word. So inspiration is verbal. Third, inspiration is. Here's another great word. Concursive. Concursive. I bet you guys. I bet Caleb uses this word a lot, too. Scripture is concursive. Any guesses for what this means? I don't know if there's like a latin root, maybe? Anyone take latin classes? Probably. But you don't know. That's okay. No guesses. I'm not going to make you guess because I don't know if I would get it. You have a guess. It all agrees. That's a good guess. What it means is that it was written together as in the spirit and the human authors wrote together. It's not more the spirit or more the authors. They wrote together the very words of God and the very words of the authors. They are together. So they are concursive with the writing. I don't know, something like that. I don't know Latin or whatever language that comes from, but they wrote together. So inspiration is it's all of scripture. It's the very words and it works with the spirit's words and the author's words. Now, this is an important way because we want to know what breathed out means. It's a good intro, but we want to see, second, what Jesus believed. So, number two, the second section, what Jesus believed. Now, this doctrine teaches us that the whole word is the word of Christ because it's all the word of God. And he is God. But let's go to a story where Jesus is speaking in the narrative to Luke. Luke, chapter 24. Luke 24. And we're going to go towards the end of it. Start in verse 44. We're going to read 44 through 49. Can I get two volunteers to read? Caleb is one, and Talia. How about Caleb? You read through, I don't know, 46, and until you pick up from there, does that work? Okay, read loud and proud. [00:14:41] Speaker B: Then he said to them, these are my words, that I spoke to you while I was still with you. That everything he didn't come out. That Christ should suffer and all day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sin should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of thy father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from our heart. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Okay, thank you, guys for reading. We're going to walk through that kind of bit by bit. So we go back to the beginning. We see Jesus say that everything written about me. Everything written about me. So he's talking about things that were written about him. Where were these things written? You can answer that. It's not a trick question. It's in there. I think I'm here in the Bible. The law of Moses. Anywhere else? The prophets and the psalms. The law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms. Good. Down. Now, when we are reading, we hear the law of MOses, the prophets and the psalms. What is this referring to exactly? I'll just tell you. The law of MOses refers to GeNesis, Exodus, LeviTicus, numbers, and deuteronomy. The prophets then, is Joshua, Judges, Samuel, kings, chronicles. And then it jumps to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Abeca, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. All of those are the prophets. That's how the Jews refer to them. We call some of those historical books in our tradition, some are different types of prophets. But to the hebrews, to the Jews, Jesus was a Jew. All of those are the prophets. And then the psalms, especially when they're listed with the law and the prophets, was always used to refer to all of the writings. And they would say psalms because they were the biggest and most prominent of the writings. So this includes other books like Job and proverbs and Ruth and chronicles. Those are writings as well. Ecclesiastes, song of Solomon, lamentations. Those are writings. So what jesus is saying is that he was written about in all of those things. All of them. And he says further, if you look also in verse 44, at the end of verse 44, he says, they must be fulfilled. They must be fulfilled. And then we read that he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. That's later in the text, the next verse. He opened their minds to understand the scriptures. What are the scriptures that he's referring to? What are the scriptures? Look in the verse prior in verse 44. What are the scriptures he's referring to? Caleb. Yeah, that's right. So what jesus is saying here is that the whole Old Testament are the scriptures. So if we truly do believe that Jesus is the Christ, the messiah, the son of God, if we believe he is a resurrected man, even as he says these words, then we should believe him when he says all of those Old Testament books are scripture and all scripture is God breathed. So take it from him directly that he believed all of those books to be scripture. Some people claim it's less relevant than the New Testament, but he thought otherwise. He wanted us to know that these are the scriptures. So this tells us that jesus believed that the Old Testament scriptures were inspired. They were the word of God. I think that's significant. But we shouldn't skip these last two verses. We shouldn't look in verses 48 and 49. He says, you are witnesses of these things. So all of these things must be fulfilled. All of it is true. They were written about him. And he is saying, you have seen it. You are witnesses. They've seen it with their own eyes. And he says, he is sending them a promise. And at the end, he says, they will be clothed with power from on high. What is that referring to when he says, you will be clothed with power from on high? Does anybody know the Holy Spirit? What are you going to say? That's a good guess. I think those are probably very connected. Yeah. The Holy Spirit, is it connected to an event that you guys can think of? Did you say it? [00:20:27] Speaker B: Pentecost. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Pentecost. That's right. We can read about Pentecost in acts, chapter two. So flip over to acts. It's just a couple books over. It's actually written by the same author. Luke wrote Luke and acts. So Luke says this written in at the end of his book, quoting Jesus. And then at the beginning of his second volume, he tells us about how they are clothed with power from on I. Acts two. Can somebody read verses one through four? Yes. Liza? Yeah. [00:21:06] Speaker B: When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them, rested on each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. [00:21:26] Speaker A: Exactly. Thank you. So we see here the Holy Spirit coming, clothing them with power to speak, speak in other languages to other peoples, and they're speaking the things that they were witnesses to. And what were they witnesses to? They're witnesses to Jesus fulfilling these scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures which were written about him. And this is now what the followers of Jesus are empowered to do through the spirit. And one thing that they do is they do this in writing the scriptures, because the people in this were apostles. And the people that wrote the New Testament then are the apostles and the apostles close friends. And we see later in two, Peter, written by Peter, who was at Pentecost. He was one of those people in that scene. He says this about scripture. If you want to write it down, it's two, Peter 121. He says, no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So they spoke from God. They were carried by the Holy Spirit. It's referring to the same sort of inspiring from God. So for this topic, two, Peter 121 is another important verse for you to, to remember. But now let's jump while we still have some time to biblical support, and we'll go through this a little quicker. So that's our third section, biblical support for this doctrine. We'll just see a few other places that it's mentioned and taught. We first can go to John 1035. So if you want to flip there, you can. John 1035. Jesus is speaking here and he says this. He says if he called them gods to whom the word came and the scripture cannot be broken, now I want to focus on this kind of parenthetical statement. He says, scripture cannot be broken. So what is happening is he is referring and quoting even psalm 82 six. And he is saying that scripture cannot be broken. So the context is just. He's quoting psalm 82 six against people that were his opponents intellectually. And he said, look, the scripture cannot be broken, so it will be fulfilled. It's about him. It cannot be broken. And in Matthew five, I know we're jumping around a lot just to save time. Matthew 517 18, if you want to write it down, if you can't flip there in time, Matthew 517 18, Jesus says, this do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, unless heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. So here jesus is saying. He said, it cannot be broken and he is not abolishing it. It will not go away. It will not disappear until it is all accomplished, all of it. It will all be fulfilled. So he again is just affirming the scriptures and what they were intended to do. Later he says in John 14, I know we were just in John. It says in John 1425 through 26. This is what he says. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. So who is hedgest? Who or what will the spirit be teaching according to this? [00:25:44] Speaker B: All things. [00:25:46] Speaker A: What are these things? Kayden, do you have a guess? Yeah. All things that he had taught. So just truths about God. All things that he had taught them. And who is he teaching it to? Who is Jesus talking to in this context? Everybody. Or Levi? It's okay. It's okay. If you're wrong, you just guess. [00:26:10] Speaker B: The disciples. [00:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah, the disciples are the apostles. So basically the authors and the companions of the authors of the New Testament. He's saying, all things that I have ever taught and all things that you will need to know that I have yet to teach will be taught to you, the authors of scripture, by my spirit. The spirit which we saw come to them in acts two. And so again, we're seeing that all of scripture is being legitimized. The same man who talked about the legitimacy of the Old Testament is saying, the New Testament, which you guys will write is by the spirit because the spirit will teach you all things. Now let's jump to number four. These are errors to avoid. So we kind of talked about some of these. These are errors that people have. I'm just gonna put errors. But errors to avoid are the three blanks. And I think there are blanks on the sub points. We'll just go through these. The first is the denial of the spirits. Inspiring work in the human authors. Denial of the spirit's inspiring work with the human authors. In the human authors. What is the issue with this? Why is this something we need to avoid? If the spirit didn't inspire, then it just came from man. Yeah, that's true. And that would make the Bible a human book, subject to errors, having no proof that it teaches anything true about God. But it would just be speculation. So that's the first. Let's go to the second. Denial of human authorship. What's the issue with denying human authorship? Oh, sorry, I didn't see your hand. You're saying it would kind of deny that humans ever saw him or knew him? Is that what you said? Yeah, that's right. It would take away any personal claim to the witnesses. Having veracity. All these people witnessing is important to the claims. And in addition, it would make the authors kind of more like passive, robotic scribes, controlled out of their mind, writing stuff that they don't know. And on top of this, when we read the Bible, if you read through it, you see different styles, you see different contexts, different words and phrases are used, different amounts, especially between the Old and New Testament, because of the language difference. And we would have no way of understanding why is God writing in all these different styles if there's no human author involved. So it makes it hard for us to answer that. The third error is the denial of plenary inspiration. Plenary. P l E N a R Y. What's the issue of denying that? Remember, that is the idea that all of the words are inspired. What's the issue? Yes, Kaden. Yeah, exactly. At least part of it would not be true, and it'd be hard to know which parts are. We talked about that earlier, and we just read a bunch of examples of how Jesus is talking about the whole thing being inspired, and that the scriptures, the words were breathed out by God. And in that fourth error is the denial of verbal inspiration. What's the issue of denying verbal that the words were inspired? Uh huh. Kind of. Yeah, kind of the same thing. Yeah, that could be an issue. A lot of times when people deny this, what they're actually saying, though, is that, well, he inspired the authors to write, but then let them write as they would. So it's one kind of hard to understand, but it also just denies what scripture teaches, that the words in the Bible are God's words. It's kind of like, here's the stuff you need, now go. And he lets them loose to write, and it denies what scripture teaches. So that's the fourth error. And then our fifth part. Fifth point of the lesson is our application. I'm just going to abbreviate it. Application. Hopefully you guys know how to spell it. Does anyone have any idea how we can apply this doctrine? How is this relevant to your lives? Why did I spend this whole time teaching it to you? Any guesses? There's probably a lot of right answers. Why is this relevant? What ways can this be applied to your life? Oh, jonah. Yeah. You better be reading it. That's a great one. Uh huh. [00:32:13] Speaker B: Now until the new one. [00:32:14] Speaker A: Uh huh. Okay. [00:32:16] Speaker B: Watch those kind of movies because then they help you. [00:32:18] Speaker A: They can help you understand the Bible more. So you want to learn more about it? [00:32:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:23] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, I'll list out a few. And that was a good answer, you two. First, we must obey the entire Bible. We must obey it all. Now, we obey things differently because there are contexts. There are historical, cultural contexts. There are what we call a covenantal context. So depending on where we're reading in the Bible, we apply it all. But we apply it differently. Maybe, but nonetheless, we try to understand it and apply it and obey it to the best of our ability. And sometimes we need help with that. That's why we come to church and we listen to our pastor preach. Second, we must trust that everything in the Bible is true. So we shouldn't approach all of it with skepticism. We should take it at face value. If you have faith, you trust in the Lord. You trust that a resurrected mandehead affirmed all of this. If you believe that a resurrected man was real, if he was real and this really happened, you should trust every iota and dot that will not pass away until it's all fulfilled. And then third, we must then share the gospel because we trust that the word and the gospel is the power of God for salvation. If this is true, if all this is true, what I'm saying, we must tell others because it is powerful, it is true, and it contains life, life that people desperately need. So if we walk away from understanding that the Bible is inspired by God, we must walk away knowing we need to share this with others. And that's all. Thank you guys. You guys did great with your participating. Thank you so much. Let's pray and then we can go over to the main building. Father God, thank you for your word. And thank you for giving us so much evidence in it that it is all completely written by you as you superintended, as you helped inspire and breathe words through the authors. God, what a beautiful book with various styles contained within all teaching who you are, Lord, I pray that we would obey it better, and we would understand who you are better, that we would have the faith to trust what your word says. And finally, that we would have the boldness to share what it says. With others. And, Lord, we pray this all in Christ's name. Amen. [00:34:59] Speaker B: I.