The Word

Not to long ago I purchased a cupboard unit from Amazon and being the guy that I am I only skimmed over the instructions as I put it together. Half way through I attached the ends before inserting the middle shelf which was required and had to take an end off. When I was finished I noticed I had some hardware left and I had to back over the instructions and find out where they went. Then when I went to hang it up I realized I had the mounting board in the back upside down. It is amazing how much time and effort I would have saved if I would have read the instructions more before begging my project. Perhaps it could be best said that if I had not been so prideful in my own abilities to accomplish the task and instead humbled myself before the instructions of the one who created the cupboard things would have been much simpler.

Oh my brothers and sisters, how we the church need to know the instructions we have been given. How we need to trust the very Word of God that has been kept for us and entrusted to us. Men have given their lives so that we might have the privilege of reading and studying God’s Word.

The Bible is our Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

John 20:31 “but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Romans 15:4 “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

The Bible is unlike any other book. In fact, it not one book it is 66 books. These 66 books were written over a period of almost 2000 years and by 40 different authors. Those 40 authors came from three different continents, wrote in three different languages, and had greatly varying professions. Yet the words of the Bible consistently and unerringly point to Christ. From the first book of Genesis to the last book of Revelation we see a consistent message about mans rebellion against his Holy Creator. That while God created the world good, mankind continues to reject God’s authority and seeks to define truth and goodness for himself. But God, in His love, mercy, and grace reaches out to an unworthy people that deserve death, that they might repent and believe in His goodness once again.

Despite forty authors writing from three continents over nearly two thousand years, it maintains a perfect consistency of message. Its words point unerringly to Christ, whose work on the cross was ordained by God—the true author of the Bible—before the world began.

Among all the books ever written, the Bible is absolutely unique. Actually, it is not just a book—it’s 66 books. And one of its most remarkable qualities is the complete unity of the overall message despite having so many different authors writing over many centuries on hundreds of controversial subjects. Natural explanations fail to account for the supernatural character and origin of Scripture. The Bible was written over a period of roughly 2,000 years by 40 different authors from three continents, who wrote in three different languages. These facts alone make the Bible one of a kind, but there are many more amazing details that defy natural explanation. From Genesis to Revelation, we see man’s repeated rebellion against his holy Creator. God made a perfect world, but mankind has continually rejected His authority and sought to decide truth for himself. Nevertheless, God promised to extend His love, grace, and mercy to unworthy people who deserved to be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity.

Both the Bible and history weave together in seamless harmony, as though the Creator ordained this plan and recorded it in Scripture even before it unfolded in history. And that’s exactly what the Bible claims took place! God says that He alone can declare the future (Isaiah 42:9), and hundreds of His prophetic predictions have been fulfilled with absolute precision, while others await fulfillment.

The unity of Scripture demonstrates its supernatural inspiration. Only the one true, holy God could provide us with such a flawless Bible that reveals such a matchless message: the Lord’s staggering love for His creation.

Isaiah 40:8“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

Matthew 24:35“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

However

I want to give you some recent statistics from a Gallup pole.

In 2022, among all U.S. adults, only 20% say the Bible is the literal word of God, which is a historic low according to Gallup. In 2017, the last time the research firm asked Americans about their views of the Bible, 24% of respondents accepted it as the literal word of God. A record 29% of Americans say the Bible is a collection of "fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man."

The data from the Gallup poll comes less than a year after, a study from Arizona Christian University found that of an estimated 176 million American adults who identify as Christian, just 6% or 15 million of them actually hold a biblical worldview.

The study found, in general, that while a majority of America’s self-identified Christians, including many who identify as Evangelical, believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and is the Creator of the universe, more than half reject a number of biblical teachings and principles, including the existence of the Holy Spirit.

Another survey that was taken found that over 85% of students in one of America’s largest evangelical seminaries stated that they do NOT belive in the inerrancy of Scripture. Furthermore when clergy were asked if they believed in the inspired and inerrant Word of God in matters of faith, history and government ... 95% of Episcopalians said “No” 87% of Methodists said “No” 82% of Presbyterians said “No” 77% of American Lutherans said “No” 67% of Baptists said “No”

Among all the books ever written, the Bible is absolutely unique. Actually, it is not just a book—it’s 66 books. And one of its most remarkable qualities is the complete unity of the overall message despite having so many different authors writing over many centuries on hundreds of controversial subjects. Natural explanations fail to account for the supernatural character and origin of Scripture. The Bible was written over a period of roughly 2,000 years by 40 different authors from three continents, who wrote in three different languages. These facts alone make the Bible one of a kind, but there are many more amazing details that defy natural explanation. From Genesis to Revelation, we see man’s repeated rebellion against his holy Creator. God made a perfect world, but mankind has continually rejected His authority and sought to decide truth for himself. Nevertheless, God promised to extend His love, grace, and mercy to unworthy people who deserved to be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity.

Both the Bible and history weave together in seamless harmony, as though the Creator ordained this plan and recorded it in Scripture even before it unfolded in history. And that’s exactly what the Bible claims took place! God says that He alone can declare the future (Isaiah 42:9), and hundreds of His prophetic predictions have been fulfilled with absolute precision, while others await fulfillment.

The unity of Scripture demonstrates its supernatural inspiration. Only the one true, holy God could provide us with such a flawless Bible that reveals such a matchless message: the Lord’s staggering love for His creation.

10,000 Sermon Illustrations Veracity

Veracity

“I have come to the conviction that no man knows enough to attack the veracity of the Old Testament. Every time when anyone has been able to get together enough documentary ‘proofs’ to undertake an investigation, the biblical facts in the original text have victoriously met the test.” - Prof. Robert Dick Wilson of Princeton, who held several doctorates and knew 45 languages and dialects of the Near East.

10,000 Sermon Illustrations (Famous Quotes)

• God is everywhere. However, He does not want you to reach out for Him everywhere but only in the Word. Reach out for it and you will grasp Him aright. Otherwise you are tempting God and setting up idolatry. That is why He has established a certain method for us. This teaches us how and where we are to look for Him and find Him, namely, in the Word. - Martin Luther

10,000 Sermon Illustrations Famous Quotes

• I am a man of one Book. - John Wesley

10,000 Sermon Illustrations Famous Quotes

• Within the covers of one single book, the Bible, are all the answers to all the problems that face us today—if only we would read and believe. - Ronald Reagan

10,000 Sermon Illustrations Veracity

I have come to the conviction that no man knows enough to attack the veracity of the O. T. Every time when anyone has been able to get together enough documentary ‘proofs’ to undertake an investigation, the biblical facts in the original text have victoriously met the test.

At Answers in Genesis—the parent ministry of Answers magazine—our statement of faith declares, “The 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God. The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs.” Those are bold claims, but how can we be so confident?

Divinely Inspired

Hundreds of detailed prophecies were written centuries before the events they accurately described. For example, just as the Old Testament foretold, the Messiah Jesus was born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14) in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), as a descendant of Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), Isaac (Genesis 17:19), and Jacob (Genesis 28:14). He was betrayed by a friend (Psalm 41:9) for 30 pieces of silver that were used to purchase the potter’s field (Zechariah 11:13). Then he was mocked and ridiculed, pierced in his hands and feet, and lots were cast for his clothing (Psalm 22:7, 16, 18). He died (Daniel 9:26) as a sacrifice for our sins and was buried in a rich man’s tomb (Isaiah 53:8–10). After a short time in the grave, he lived again (Psalm 16:10; Isaiah 53:10).

In addition, the central events described in Scripture—the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ—have as strong historical support as any event in ancient history.

Historical evidence

Though historical and scientific investigations offer strong evidence of the Bible’s authenticity and reliability, they cannot prove the Bible to be true in its entirety. But the Holy Spirit, given to all believers (2 Corinthians 5:5), grants us the ability to recognize his Word (1 Corinthians 2:10–14), instilling in us a steadfast confidence that the Scriptures he inspired are true.

Archaeologists have located scores of buried cities located precisely where the Bible describes. Excavations have also uncovered an abundance of evidence for events and individuals mentioned in the Bible. For example, several seals (or bullae) belonging to King Hezekiah have been found, and in the past decade, another one was unearthed just 10 feet (3 m) from a seal that may well have belonged to the prophet Isaiah, one of the king’s advisors.

The biblical flood account is corroborated by geological evidence around the globe. We find the same rock layers spanning several continents, indicating that they were deposited on a global scale at the same time.

Anthropological investigations among ancient cultures have revealed hundreds of flood legends sharing an uncanny number of details with the biblical record. Similar legends correspond with the Bible’s account of man’s creation and fall and of Babel.

Biological research, particularly in the field of genetics, has shown that one “kind” of animal (such as the dog kind or cat kind) can never be transformed into another kind of animal over time because it does not possess any mechanism to acquire the necessary new genetic information to evolve into another kind.

Paleontologists have uncovered dinosaur remains containing soft tissue and blood cells, which could not exist in fossils that are millions of years old, as evolutionists assume. But these finds are consistent with the biblical account of those bones being buried thousands of years ago during the flood.

Significantly, the Lord Jesus Christ treated Scripture as being authoritative and without error, stating that it cannot be broken (John 10:35) and citing it frequently to correct those in error and respond to their questions (Matthew 12:1–8). Since he is the Son of God, we must follow his example.

Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6) and “God’s word is truth” (John 17:17). Jesus claimed to define what truth is, and He said God’s Word is the ultimate judge of truth (John 12:48). No truth exists apart from Him. As the Bible explains it, “In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). So the Bible clearly claims an exalted position as the ultimate authority.

Moreover, God’s Word concludes that all other standards outside of Christ must be “empty” because they depend on “the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8). For the Bible to appeal to any other authority would be to deny its own place as the ultimate standard. (We don’t need to bludgeon people with this truth, but the rightness of our position should encourage us.)

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Let’s start by understanding what we mean when we talk about the Bible as “inspired” because that word may mislead us. The term is an attempt to translate a word that occurs only once in the New Testament, and it’s not the best translation, even though William Tyndale introduced it back in 1526. The word is found in 2 Timothy 3:16, and the Greek is theopneustos. This term is made from two words, one being the word for God (theos, as in theology) and the other referring to breath or wind (pneustos, as in pneumonia and pneumatic). It is significant that the word is used in 2 Timothy 3:16 passively. In other words, God did not “breathe into” (inspire) all Scripture, but it was “breathed out” by God (expired). Thus, 2 Timothy 3:16 is not about how the Bible came to us but where it came from. The Scriptures are “God-breathed.”

To know how the Bible came to us, we can turn to 2 Peter 1:21 where we discover that “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” The Greek word used here is pherō, which means “to bear” or “to carry.” It was a familiar word that Luke used of the sailing ship carried along by the wind (Acts 27:15, 17). The human writers of the Bible certainly used their minds, but the Holy Spirit carried them along in their thinking so that only His God-breathed words were recorded. The Apostle Paul set the matter plainly in 1 Corinthians 2:13: “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches.”

The word “inspiration” is so embedded in our Christian language that we will continue to use it, though we now know what it really means. God breathed out His Word, and the Holy Spirit guided the writers. The Bible has one Author and many (around 40) writers.

With these two acts of God—breathing out His Word and carrying the writers along by the Spirit—we can come to a definition of inspiration:

When we talk about inerrancy, we refer to the original writings of Scripture. We do not have any of the original “autographs,” as they are called, but only copies, including many copies of each book. There are small differences here and there, but in reality they are amazingly similar. One eighteenth century New Testament scholar claimed that not one thousandth part of the text was affected by these differences.1 Now that we know what inerrancy means, let’s cover what it doesn’t mean.

Inerrancy doesn’t mean everything in the Bible is true. We have the record of men lying (e.g., Joshua 9) and even the words of the devil himself. But we can be sure these are accurate records of what took place.Inerrancy doesn’t mean apparent contradictions are not in the text, but these can be resolved. At times different words may be used in recounting what appears to be the same incident. For example, Matthew 3:11 refers to John the Baptist carrying the sandals of the Messiah, whereas John 1:27 refers to him untying them. John preached over a period of time, and he would repeat himself; like any preacher he would use different ways of expressing the same thing.Inerrancy doesn’t mean every extant copy is inerrant. It is important to understand that the doctrine of inerrancy only applies to the original manuscripts.

Inerrancy does mean it is incorrect to claim the Bible is only “reasonably accurate,” as some do.2 That would leave us uncertain as to where we could trust God’s Word.

In Matthew 22:31–32 Jesus claimed the words of Exodus 3:6 were given to them by God. In Matthew 22:43–44 our Lord quoted from Psalm 110:1 and pointed out that David wrote these words “in the Spirit,” meaning he was actually writing the words of God.

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Inerrancy Governs Our Confidence in the Truth of the Gospel

If the Scripture is unreliable, can we offer the world a reliable gospel? How can we be sure of truth on any issue if we are suspicious of errors anywhere in the Bible? A pilot will ground his aircraft even on suspicion of the most minor fault, because he is aware that one fault destroys confidence in the complete machine. If the history contained in the Bible is wrong, how can we be sure the doctrine or moral teaching is correct?

The heart of the Christian message is history. The Incarnation (God becoming a man) was demonstrated by the Virgin Birth of Christ. Redemption (the price paid for our rebellion) was obtained by the death of Christ on the Cross. Reconciliation (the privilege of the sinner becoming a friend of God) was gained through the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. If these recorded events are not true, how do we know the theology behind them is true?

Inerrancy Governs Our Faith in the Value of Christ

We cannot have a reliable Savior without a reliable Scripture. If, as many suggest, the stories in the Gospels are not historically true and the recorded words of Christ are only occasionally His, how do we know what we can trust about Christ? Must we rely upon the conflicting interpretations of a host of critical scholars before we know what Christ was like or what He taught? If the Gospel stories are merely the result of the wishful thinking of the church in the second or third centuries, or even the personal views of the Gospel writers, then our faith no longer rests upon Jesus but upon the opinions of men. Who would trust an unreliable Savior for their eternal salvation?

A church without the authority of Scripture is like a crocodile without teeth; it can open its mouth as wide and as often as it likes—but who cares? Thankfully, God has given us His inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word. His people can speak with authority and boldness, and we can be confident we have His instructions for our lives. -----------------------------------------

I give lectures on this all the time, I like to say that there's two attitudes we need to avoid when it comes to the text of the New Testament. One is radical disparagement, or radical rejection of the whole idea that we can recover the text. But the other is absolute certainty.

Now King James is not the only translation that people are absolutely certain is the only right translation. Even people who use modern translations—the ESV, the NIV, other translations—they often think their Bible is the very word of God in every single respect. It's not.

First of all it's a translation. Secondly, it's a translation of texts where scholars who are putting these together discover later additions realizing, it's not exactly this word that's in the Greek text, it's this one. There comes a false sense of security today from the published text.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes you've got scholars sifting through thousands of manuscripts that have been discovered since the 16th century when we started to put these texts together.

The Bible was not faxed from heaven. Scholars have had to work behind the scenes from the very first printed Bible until today to reconstruct what they believe is the original text on the basis of a careful sifting of the manuscripts.

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Before a single word of the biblical text is translated, the translation committee, denomination, or other group commissioning the translation decides what their translation philosophy will be. Do they want to produce a “literal” translation, a paraphrase, or something in between?

The first option results in what is usually called a “word-for-word” translation or a “literal” translation (though both are impossible). English translations that strive for a word-for-word translation include the LEB, NASB, KJV, and ESV.

The second option results in a “thought-for-thought” translation, also called a “functional” or “dynamically equivalent” translation. Translators try to represent the meaning of every Greek or Hebrew word in a style that reflects proper, readable English. Their goal is to “produce the same effect on readers today that the original produced on its readers.” NIV, NLT, CEV, and NCV.

A third mode of translation adds explanatory words or phrases that are not in the original text. These are better called “paraphrases”. Popular English paraphrases include the AMP and MSG.

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What Were the Scribes’ Main Duties?

The answer is simple: copy work. But, it was to be done in a certain way: perfectly. The holy Scriptures or manuscripts were to be protected against corruption, additions, or deletions. The goal, preserve the Scriptures.

David Down and Dr. John Ashton explain in an Answers in Genesis article just how careful the scribes had to be:

“The Jewish scribes, whose duty was to copy the books, built-in certain customs as mechanisms to protect the records these books contained from corruption or amendment. In some instances, they counted every verse, every word, and even every letter in every book of the Old Testament. They also had practices such as recording the word that was in the exact middle of the book so that later copyists could count both ways and be sure they had not left out even a single letter.”

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Old Testament manuscript reliability is based on three factors: their abundance, dating, and accuracy. Most works from antiquity survive on only a handful of manuscripts: only 7 for Plato, 8 for Thucydides, 8 for Herodotus, 10 for Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and 20 for Tacitus. Only the works of Demosthenes and Homer number into the hundreds. Yet even before 1890 a scholar named Giovanni de Rossi published 731 OT manuscripts. Since that time some 10,000 OT manuscripts were found in the Cairo Geniza, and in 1947 the Dead Sea caves at Qumran produced over 600 OT manuscripts.

The reliability of the NT is established because the number, date, and accuracy of its manuscripts enable reconstruction of the original text with more precision than any other ancient text. The number of NT manuscripts is overwhelming (almost 5,700 Greek manuscripts) compared with the typical book from antiquity (about 7 to 10 manuscripts; Homer’s Iliad has the most at 643 manuscripts). The NT is simply the best textually supported book from the ancient world.

In summary, the vast number, early dates, and unmatched accuracy of the OT and NT manuscript copies establish the Bible’s reliability well beyond that of any other ancient book. Its substantial message has been undiminished through the centuries, and its accuracy on even minor details has been confirmed, Thus the Bible we hold in our hands today is a highly trustworthy copy of the original that came from the pens of the prophets and apostles.