Fundamental Truth
Fundamental Truth: The Infallible Word of God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 4 viewsExploration of God's Word as infallible, you cannot pick and choose, it is all or none
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The First Fundamental Truth of the Assemblies of God: The Bible is Inspired
The First Fundamental Truth of the Assemblies of God: The Bible is Inspired
It has been said that the only thing that is constant in our world is change, I have discussed the idea of change many times and even at this very pulpit. I have often explained that people actually like change, they do not like ceding control.
As I am buying a new home with my lovely bride I am so excited for the opportunities that are availing themselves in this. I am thrilled for the new yard my dogs will enjoy as it is just over an acre. I am excited for my tripling my office size, prayerfully considering how God is going to use that for podcasts and videos.
However, I am stressed out by the selection of movers, the banks, the sellers getting out in time, the packing of my house, and so many other things. Many of them are choices but many of them are out of my control, I cannot control the quality of the movers on moving day for instance.
Choice is nice to have though. You know the first production car made and sold in America by Henry Ford was the Model T, and it was a marvel to be seen in 1908. The car was produced for 18 years until 1927 and for the most part did not change engines or chassis in that entire time. The car boasted a ripping 4 cylinder, 20 horsepower engine and a hand crank to start it, but often did not come with things like side windows and brakes. One of the more interesting things is that the car only came in one color for many years, black. No choices. It was not until the Model A that consumers now had a choice of 4 different colors for their car, four.
Fast forward to today, just go and try to order a cup of coffee. The choices are endless it seems,
Do you want espresso or drip, light, medium or dark roast, mild or bold
Black or sugar
Whole milk, 2%, Skim, Half and Half, oat milk, soy milk, coconut milk, eggnog, etc.
Latte, Mocha, Cappuccino, Flat White, Breve, a ristretto an espresso or a lungo
After those decisions it gets complicated because now we add syrups
The problem today is that consumerism has invaded our lives with a pervasive mentality of burger king, have it your way. Take what you like, leave you what do not like, make it yours and therefore let it fit your life and desires.
Our culture has been accustomed to the customization and options selection idea from the smallest of things to the biggest of purchases like a new home or a new car. Here is the problem though, cars and coffee are not like the Word of God.
However, many people are approaching their faith in the same fashion, they are looking at their faith as religious consumers and looking at various truths to pick and choose. I like this one, I do not like that one, I am going to take half of this teaching because I only like part of it. I am pretty sure you can all see the problem with this right?
This is why 2 years after the Assemblies of God was founded in 1914, so in 1916, the churches came together and they wrote down the core doctrinal beliefs that guide the Assemblies of God as a Fellowship of Churches. These became known as our 16 Fundamental Truths, then from these we also have our Four Core Doctrines that we believe essential to fulfilling our mission as given by the Great Commission.
So while change is a constant there are some things in that never change—nor should they. Such is God, unlike the human condition, God never changes
“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And like Him, His Truth is also everlasting. It remains the single constant in our every dynamic world of shifting cultural values. These truths of God are His Word, they are recorded in Bible and are foundational to life.
PRAY IN THE WORD
Today I want to discuss our first fundamental truth in the Assemblies of God.
We believe the Bible is complete and adequate in itself to serve as a the guide for our beliefs and way of living. These truths that we have are our common basis for unity, as the Bible recommends, that we may agree with one another so as to avoid divisions because or disagreements on what we believe.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.
Now understand, in the fundamental truths we make no claim that what we have written down is as divinely inspired like the Bible but the truth they set forth is felt to be essential to the full gospel and a Bible based ministry.
So what is the first fundamental truth of the Assemblies of God?
The First Fundamental Truth of the Assemblies of God
The Bible is Inspired
The Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, are verbally inspired of God and are the revelation of God to man, the infallible, authoritative rule of faith and conduct.
I recall a story of a pastor who was asked to be an intermediate between another preacher and his board of elders. In a heated meeting the preacher was talking how the Bible related to the issue at hand. One of the elders jumped in and said something to the effect of “Well, the Bible might say but I feel...” The preacher got up and left the meeting, the rest of the elders feared he would not return.
I believe we can see the issue with that statement. We have to ask the question, Can we Trust our Feeling and Experiences
A fairly recent Barna Research Group survey regarding what Americans believe asked the question:
“Is there absolute truth?” 66% of adults responded that they believe that “there is no such thing as absolute truth; different people can define truth in conflicting ways and still be correct.”
If that is true then where are modern day men and women to turn for stability, where are they to find a foundation on which to build their lives? Look, if no one is wrong about the truth then no one is right about the truth. It leaves many people with this belief then that they should turn inward, truth and enlightenment come from within themselves. When people do this then there is:
No stability to any belief, it is always changing
No enduring ethical standards, situational ethics rule the day
No way to validate one’s conclusions, No way to test experiences
No basis for concluding that one person is right and the other is wrong
No real hop for the future.
As a God fearing Christian we have to live out the slogan “The Bible and the Bible alone is our only rule of faith and practice.”
So let us talk about the authority of the Word.
The Authority of God
God reigns the supreme ruler of the universe. He holds the ultimate authority.
Nothing or no one else possesses any authority except when granted by God.
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.
This holds true of the Bible. The Bible finds it authority not in its human writers, not in its ability to stand the test of time, an not even its subject matter. Scripture has authority because of its origin.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
And Paul’s words to the church in Thessolonica
For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
When people speak of the “authority of Scripture”, this phrase serves only as acknowledgement that God, who holds all authority, invested authority into His Word.
Sometimes we do not handle or treat the Word of God correctly, we do not handle it as it should be handled.
Sometimes we look at the Bible only as an answer book.
Sometimes we look at it as a devotional work meant to give us the warm fuzzies.
Sometimes we approach it as a checklist of rules in order to define right and wrong.
Sometimes as place to find proof of our favorite doctrines.
Each and every one of these uses has a kernel of truth, but when we view the Bible in only these ways we miss the transformative power of God’s Word.
Unfortunately we can also get caught up viewing the Bible as a really big textbook. I have heard more than one person, especially in seminary students, say things like “I have a hard time reading the Bible for myself because I am always thinking about papers, tests, lessons, sermons, or applications.”
Studying the Word does involve work occasionally, but such work should lead us into a greater awe of God, not just lead us through a routine or academic exercise. I have a good friend who is in his 70s, he has been walking with God most all of his life. He relayed to me over breakfast one morning a week after I taught a lesson on this topic that he found himself in that trap. He gets up every morning and has time set aside to read the word, but in the last few months or even year it had been a routine, not a passion. He noticed he was not feeling spiritually fed. The Word is a conversation with God, not an exercise or practice we do.
Some see the Bible as a book of history. Well it kind of is history, His Story.
The Bible begins with:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
and it ends with a happily ever after as John describes the New Heaven and earth and Jesus’ promise to return. Between those bookends lies the story of God’s redemption of a deeply flawed, but deeply loved, creation. Had God given only a list of rules or a series of logical principles, people very well may have simply ignored it in our infinite pursuit of knowledge sought to explain it all away. Instead, His Story, God’s Story, energizes and transforms. As God’s people, we find our identity, our purpose, our very reason for life in HIs Story, God’s Story, the Holy Scriptures
Scripture reveals God, Deus Revelatus (The God Who Reveals Himself). Now God has revealed Himself in many ways to mankind. Some revelation is possible without words, such as the knowledge of God that comes to us through nature. Because of sin though, we are inclined to ignore it or distort it
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Therefore we need word revelation. LIMBIC SYSTEM AND PARABLES STORY HERE
Words are the most natural form of communication for human beings. Knowing this and knowing how God created us, it is rather inconceivable that God would choose not to use words or speech in revealing Himself to us. The truth is that God has spoken and still speaks today. The expression “thus saith the Lord” or similar statements appear close to 2000 times in the OT alone.
Why is it necessary for revelation to be written?
Puts it in permanent form so that it is available to future generations.
Gives us an objective standard, accessible to all in the same form and the same way.
Gives us a certain finality that is keeping with its absolute authority.
The Authority of the Apostles
In this New Testament age, God revealed His authoritative truth through Jesus’ apostles.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
The early church, early Christians, devoted themselves to learning from the apostles, the ones that sat at Jesus’ feet and learned directly from Him.
We do not have that same privilege to sit with those who sat with our Lord and Savior. We do, however, have the apostles’ teaching recorded in the New Testament. The books of the New Testament come from pens of the apostles Matthew, John, Peter, and Paul. It also comes from those who heard directly from the apostles such as Mark (primarily through Peter) and Luke (mainly through Paul).
God holds all authority.
He invested His authority, through the apostles, into the New Testament.
The Authority of God’s Word
We already discussed one specific aspect of God’s authority in the word revelation. Let us look at just a couple more terms that are used.
Inspiration
Inspiration is the term that is used to refer to the special supernatural supervision exercised by God over his messengers to make sure they communicate His message accurately.
The Scriptures of the entire Bible are verbally inspired of God. It was not just the ideas that were inspired; even the choice of words was inspired as the original writers were moved by God to write what He wanted them to say.
Even though the word inspiration seldom appears in Scripture, the fact that God Himself is speaking through the Biblical writers is often repeated. The Holy Spirit spoke the truth of God though human writers.
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
When God invested His authority into Scripture, He did not simply deliver completed manuscripts, penned by His own hand, to printers all around the world for distribution, no fax network or mass email communication system. Instead, the Holy Spirit transmitted His authoritative Word through the pens, personalities, and experiences of human beings. On some occasions, God dictated word for word what the human authors wrote (several times with Moses for example). As a result the Spirit’s involvement ensure that the Bible consists of God’s true and authoritative Word, and the involvement of human writers results in various writing styles, emotions, and a reflection of their experiences.
Plenary
You might here something like this: We believe in plenary inspiration of Scripture. Why?
Plenary means entire. Every part of the book was produced under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
This means that both the New Testament and the Old Testament are inspired. Paul states clearly in 2 Timothy that all Scripture is God breathed.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
Every kind of biblical genre bears the quality of inspiration. We cannot say that historical sections are not inspired by while the doctrinal and law sections are inspired. There is no basis for that.
However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets,
Inerrant means free from error.
This applies specifically to the original manuscripts as they came directly from the inspired apostles and prophets. Today we do not have those physical manuscripts produced by these writers, but we do have the original text that was on these manuscripts as determined with reasonable certainty by the science of what we call textual criticism.
Infallible means it is incapable of error.
The terms infallible and inerrant go together but they are not the same at all. Infallible is a much stronger term than inerrant. A statement or document may be inerrant without being infallible, but it can never be infallible without being inerrant. The Bible is inerrant because it is infallible, it is infallible because it is the inspired Word of God.
Since God knows all things, He cannot make a mistake, and since He cannot lie, He cannot deceive us. Anything that can truly be called the Word of God must be true:
Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
This why Jesus stated as a general principle that Scripture can be broken in
If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside—
Scripture cannot be broken or set aside, that means it cannot be destroyed, refuted, found faulty, found untrue or disproved. In other words, Scripture is final. Scripture cannot be put aside. We see then in that opening story of the elder and the preacher, the elder was in the wrong. He might be able to discuss the interpretation and application of Scripture in that instance but to disregard Scripture altogether is wrong.
If we do not agree that all Scripture inspired of God and is therefore infallible and authoritative, we have no dependable standard on which to base our lives. Instead of having a guide that is fixed and reliable, everything becomes relative and uncertain. However since God does not change as do shifting shadows
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
we can be certain that His truth also remains steadfast, enduring all the time, generations, and cultures.
ACTION STEP: Stand firm in believing that the God of yesterday is the same today and tomorrow and that His holy infallible Word is true, inspired, infallible and authoritative.