God's Perfect Word, the Bible
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God’s Perfect Word, the Bible
God’s Perfect Word, the Bible
We have been talking about previously in our earlier lessons:
The attributes of the Holy Spirit.
The importance of how we should pray.
The importance of growth after salvation.
The assurance of our salvation.
And last week we learned the biblical meaning of faith.
Tonight we are going to learn how we can be
absolutely sure that what we’ve previously studied is
the truth. “God’s perfect word”.
Our Christian faith has to start with believing that the
Bible is the perfect, infallible, inerrant word of God.
If we don’t, we should all just pack it up and go back to our rooms right now. We are all just wasting our time. Our senses (our gut) tells us that we have to have something to base our belief in God on, and we do. The Bible. Creation itself, demands that there is a creator. Our conscience, that each one of us is born with, screams out there is a God. And there is !
God has given us, through His love, grace, and mercy, his perfect instruction manual to live a victorious life. The Bible.
Let’s take a look at what the Bible says about itself, to understand it’s authenticity, reliability, and inerrancy.
First off, the scripture reads through the pen of the apostle Paul in 2 Tim 3:16, that:
16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
Doctrine is what we believe as a Christian or the body of Christ. Of course all denominations don’t believe the same thing and that’s another lesson in itself.
Reproof means to rebuke or criticize.
The apostle Peter tells us in his second letter found in our New Testament in 2 Pet 1:20-21 stating:
20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
These two verses alone, tell us that we can fully, without a doubt, trust in what the bible tells us. These verses are the main two verses that the Christian faith’s doctrine of inspiration comes from. As I’m sure you’ve been taught concerning the truth of the bible we have three main doctrines pertaining to it. The doctrine of Inspiration, the doctrine of preservation, and the doctrine of utilization. For now we are going focus on the doctrine of inspiration which we have been talking about. We will talk about preservation and utilization in another lesson. But for now we need to believe that every word, verse, chapter, and book in the bible is the inspired, trustworthy word of God, the absolute truth. Like I said earlier, if we don’t believe this our so called Christian walk is in vain and putting it bluntly, worthless. Everything we as humanity can wholeheartedly trust is found in the Bible.
Let’s take a look at what our Old Testament says about the truth of the Bible.
In Psalms 12:6, David writes:
6 The words of the Lord are pure words, Like silver tried in a furnace of earth, Purified seven times.
In Psalms 19:7, David also writes:
7 The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
In Psalms 119:160, the Psalmist says:
160 The entirety of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever.
In Prov 30:5, David’s son Solomon writes:
5 Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.
The prophet Isaiah states in Isa 40:8, that:
8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.”
It should be obvious to us, that the Old Testament prophets, the Holy men of God, believed the words recorded by Moses in the Torah. God spoke to them the same way He spoke to Moses, as he was told to go to Egypt and lead God’s chosen people out of Egypt, and into the land He had promised them through the unconditional covenant he had made with Abraham. It is crystal clear, that all through the ages that God’s word, the Bible, is the trustworthy, inerrant word of God.
Let’s now take a look at what God says about the inerrancy of His word, the Bible, through His writers of the New Testament.
We’ve already looked at two verses form the New Testament, but there’s plenty more we can look at to prove the truth of the Bible.
In Matthew’s gospel, as Jesus is being tested by satan in Mat 4:4, the apostle writes:
4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ”
Jesus is quoting the last part of Deut 8:3 here. Jesus was using this quote here saying that life, present and eternal, comes from His words that He was speaking at that time, and the words that had been recorded in the past through scripture. For us today, that same life Jesus was speaking of, is available to us through belief in what God has given us, the Bible.
In Mat 5:18, as Jesus is telling us that He has come to earth to fulfill the law of Moses, He says:
18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.
When Jesus said “till all is fulfilled”, He meant until the new heaven and the new earth would come down from heaven and Israel and the body of Christ, the church, would exist together forever in eternity.
In the gospel of Luke, in Chapter 24 after Jesus had risen from the dead, Luke tells us in Luke 24:44, that Jesus told the twelve:
Luke 24:44 (NKJV)
44 “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”
Jesus is telling the twelve, that everything God had instructed the Old Testament writers to write concerning Himself had been fulfilled, assuring that God’s written word is the truth.
In the gospel of John, as Jesus is praying for his disciples He says in:
17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.
The apostle Paul writes in 1 Thes 2:13
13 For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.
Notice Paul says the Bible is not the word of man, but the truth, the very words of God.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, in chapter 3, as he is explaining that there is no man righteous, not even one, he writes in verses 3 and 4:
3 For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? 4 Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written: “That You may be justified in Your words, And may overcome when You are judged.”
Paul is quoting the last part of Psalms 51:4 here.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the apostle Paul eludes to what we kinda looked at the beginning of the lesson. If we don’t believe that every word in the Bible is true we ought to just pack it up and go back to our rooms. We are just wasting our time, because everything we know about God who created everything, is found in the B.I.B.L.E. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is saying here, all we know about the resurrection of Jesus Christ is found in the Bible, and if we can’t believe in the resurrection of Christ, because we can’t believe that everything written in the Bible is true, then our faith and the blessed hope we have for eternal life is in fact worthless. We have to believe the true “word of God” the Bible. 1 Corinthians 15:13-20 reads:
1 Corinthians 15:13–20 (NKJV)
13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. 14 And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. 15 Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. 16 For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. 17 And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! 18 Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men to be most pitied. 20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
In the book of Titus, during Paul’s introduction to the letter, he writes in the first two verses:
1 Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness, 2 in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began,
It is impossible for God to lie. That would go against His holy nature and everything that He has ever revealed to us about Himself.
Lastly lets look at what the writer of the book of Hebrews says about the truth of the Bible. In chapter 6:18 the writer states:
18 that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.
4. Knowing, and believing what the Bible says about itself, has to give us confidence that we can fully trust it. And it’s high time, that this evil world we currently live in does just that. The Bible tells us, there is no other way to get to heaven and have eternal life, except by believing what it says about salvation, and by trusting in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you’ve never trusted Jesus to be your Lord and saviour, right now is the time to make it happen. I beg you please don’t put it off another second. Nowhere in the Bible are we promised another breath of life on this earth, but the Bible does promise that we will live forever in heaven with Jesus, if we just believe the gospel. God has made it so easy for us, yet the majority of people never do it. Please be a member of the minority. It is so easy, just pray a little prayer like this.......................................