God’s Eternal Word
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· 14 viewsGod’s Word is fixed for all time.
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89 Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven.
90 Your faithfulness endures to all generations; You established the earth, and it abides.
91 They continue this day according to Your ordinances, For all are Your servants.
92 Unless Your law had been my delight, I would then have perished in my affliction.
93 I will never forget Your precepts, For by them You have given me life.
94 I am Yours, save me; For I have sought Your precepts.
95 The wicked wait for me to destroy me, But I will consider Your testimonies.
96 I have seen the consummation of all perfection, But Your commandment is exceedingly broad.
Prayer
Prayer
Introduction
Introduction
The bible is one of, if not the most attacked documents in all of history.
Day in and day out the Bible is attacked and picked over and scrutinized.
Textual critics comb through thousands of manuscripts to find thousands of variants in an attempt to undermine the authority of Scripture.
But they fail to tell you that 99% of those so called variants are nothing more than spelling errors, the most common of which is the difference between the English words “a” and “an”.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why?
More importantly, have you ever wondered why no other religious text on earth is scrutinized in the same manner?
No one criticizes the Qur’an in the same manner, despite the fact that the Qur’an directly contradicts itself and the Bible and contains within it such ridiculous scientific “facts” as:
The human embryo goes through a blood clot stage.
I will assure it does not!!
Human semen comes from a place between the backbone and the ribs.
Again, NOPE!!
Take the Qur’an out of it for a moment.
When was the last time you heard someone scrutinize the Hindu Veda texts? - NEVER
Or the Tripitaka, which is the main religious text of Buddhists? - AGAIN, NEVER!!
Many Christians wonder why this is?
I think I know.
See we know from Ephesians 6:12
12 … we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
We know from the text of Scripture Satan is the author of all lies.
He is the great deceiver
He wants each and every one of us on earth to follow his lies.
It follows, therefore, that he does not want us to follow the truthful words of God.
After all, wasn’t that great serpent of old’s fist temptation not, “‘Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
Did you know, by the way, that the Quran 3:54, that Allah is the greatest of deceivers?
Keep in mind that Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the eternal speech of their so-called god.
Is it any wonder, then, why the Bible, which is the source of all truth, gets attacked, while the Qur’an never seems to get touched?
Of course, as Bible-believing Christians, we believe that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God and the source of Truth, Morality, and Understanding.
Furthermore, we believe that when the Bible says the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses—They actually were written by Moses.
We believe that when the Bible says that all 66 chapters of Isaiah were written by the Prophet Isaiah, they were actually written by the Prophet Isaiah.
That when the Bible says that 1 & 2 Peter were written by Peter, and 1, 2, & 3 John were written by John the Apostle, they actually were!!!!
But what is sad is that a lot of professing Christians do not believe what we here at Grace believe about the Bible.
Pew Research
In 2015, just under 60% of evangelical churches espoused a literal interpretation of Scripture.
In 2019, 61% of Southern Baptists accepted the Bible as the literal Word of God.
Barna Group
In 2021, 26% of respondents believed the Bible is the actual word of God and should be taken literally.
In 2021, 29% of respondents believed the Bible is the word of God, but parts of it can be interpreted both literally and symbolically.
So the question I have for you today, Church, is could you back up your beliefs with Scripture?
Could you challenge a Muslim or even a so-called Christian with the Words of Scripture and show them that our view of the Bible is correct.
Could you lead them to the understanding that God has providentially preserved His Word throughout the last 3500 or so years since Moses, carried along by the Holy Spirit to pen the words of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy?
In order to answer that, let’s look at the text of Scripture and march through what it says about this topic!
Fair warning, I will be quoting a LOT of scripture, but the majority of these I have included in your sermon outline.
What Does the Bible Say ?
What Does the Bible Say ?
I. GOD IS ALL-POWERFUL AND ABLE TO PRESERVE HIS WORD!
I. GOD IS ALL-POWERFUL AND ABLE TO PRESERVE HIS WORD!
If you stop and think about it, in order to hold that God HAS preserved the Scriptures, we need to fist consider whether God CAN preserve Scriptures!
The Bible teaches:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
I believe in an all-powerful God!
The world teaches the ridiculous concept that the entire universe, that everything, came from nothing—and yet they say that we are the crazy ones for believing in God.
The Bible teaches that the Our God is so Powerful, so Mighty, that He made everything that ever was, is or is to come!!!
That my, friends, is a powerful God!
And once you believe the miracle that is God’s wonderful creation, belief in all other miracles becomes like second nature.
The Bible teaches:
17 ‘Ah, Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.
27 “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?
2 “I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.
26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
You see, we serve a powerful God that is able to do exceedingly more than anything we think is possible!
Amen!
II. GOD REVEALED THE OLD TESTAMENT TO TEACH HIS PEOPLE!
II. GOD REVEALED THE OLD TESTAMENT TO TEACH HIS PEOPLE!
One of the common things skeptics say of the Bible is that it was passed down as oral tradition for centuries, and that no one could accurately remember that much information.
They say, they were nothing but ignorant, illiterate goat herders.
First of all, I know a whole lot of farmers, some of which are functionally illiterate, and I’ll tell you that many of them are far smarter than any high-falutin ivory tower academics that hold multiple degrees.
The second thing I will say about that is that these folks think too little of the human mind.
I know that in today’s day and age, with Google at our fingertips, we are terrible at memorizing and learning anything.
Let’s face it, we have gotten dumber and dumber as information has become more readily available.
But in oral cultures, memorization was and still is somewhat of a way of life.
People in olden times would memorize long pieces of information. Shakespearian actors would memorize the entire play for performances.
And even today, you have to give it to Muslims, because many devout Muslims will memorize entire chapters of the Qur’an and sometimes the entire Qur’an itself.
But the truth is none of that really matters, because the Bible says that it is a WRITTEN DOCUMENT!!
3 So Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do.”
4 And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. And he rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel.
7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient.”
9 The Lord your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your land for good. For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers,
10 if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
But you see, all that stuff about the Old Testament believers in YHWH being ignorant goat herders is just absolute garbage anyways.
Do they not know that Moses was a son of Pharaoh’s daughter and was raised in the Egyptian palace?!
Certainly those that attack the Bible authors know that this man would have been educated by the best teachers in the land.
The same can be said of one of the most controversial writers of the Old Testament, Daniel, who was educated as a member of Nebuchadnezzar’s court.
Ezra and Nehemiah were members of the king’s court and educated men.
The Bible goes on time and again to affirm that the Word of God was WRITTEN down!
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,
2 “Thus speaks the Lord God of Israel, saying: ‘Write in a book for yourself all the words that I have spoken to you.
37 And the statutes, the ordinances, the law, and the commandment which He wrote for you, you shall be careful to observe forever; you shall not fear other gods.
You see over and over again, the Old Testament affirms that the prophets WROTE DOWN God’s word.
Furthermore, we know that they did write down God’s Words as instructed, because in both Ezra and Nehemiah, the Book of the Law was read to the people!
III. GOD REVEALED THE NEW TESTAMENT TO TEACH HIS PEOPLE!
III. GOD REVEALED THE NEW TESTAMENT TO TEACH HIS PEOPLE!
The funny thing about skeptics is that they always seem to attack the Bible but never seem to really read it to understand.
After all:
1 Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us,
2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us,
3 it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus,
4 that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.
24 This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true.
25 And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.
The Book of Revelation also says:
10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet,
11 saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” and, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
19 Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this.
Here the Lord Jesus Christ commanded John to write the things he was told to write, and following that Jesus dictated seven letters to seven churches!!
So, as someone who cares what the Bible says and cares what God has to say about His own revelation, it DRIVES ME NUTS when skeptics try to say that things were passed down orally forever before being written down!
THEY WERE NOT!!!
Just look at the text.
And again, just as I said earlier with the Old Testament writers, two of the authors, who wrote a huge percent of the New Testament were no illiterate nomads!!
Luke was a physician!
And Paul, who wrote 13 books of the New Testament, was a Pharisee, educated by Gamaliel and most certainly able to write in at least Greek, and likely Hebrew and Aramaic!!
I wonder, how many of the skeptics that doubt the writings of the New Testament were fluent in three languages?!?
IV. GOD PROMISED TO PRESERVE HIS WORD FOR ALL TIME!
IV. GOD PROMISED TO PRESERVE HIS WORD FOR ALL TIME!
Look at what our passage says:
“Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven. Your faithfulness endures to all generations…”
There are dozens of passages like this throughout both the Old and New Testaments.
I won’t give you an exhaustive list, but here are a sampling of verses that I encourage you to treasure up in your heart:
160 The entirety of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.”
8 Now go, write it before them on a tablet, And note it on a scroll, That it may be for time to come, Forever and ever:
2 For His merciful kindness is great toward us, And the truth of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord!
And let’s not forget what the New Testament says:
Peter states:
23 … the word of God which lives and abides forever,
The writer of Hebrews that the blood of the covenant is an EVERLASTING COVENANT!!
And we certainly cannot forget the words of the Lord Jesus in:
18 … till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.
35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.
V. GOD PROVIDENTIALLY PRESERVED HIS WORD!!
V. GOD PROVIDENTIALLY PRESERVED HIS WORD!!
Have you ever stopped to think about what a miraculous gift of God we hold in our hands today?!?
We hold a book that was written by some 40+ authors, from prophets to peasants, from courtiers to kings, from prisoners to princes, and from slaves our Savior!
We hold a book that was written over 1400 years in every setting from a desert to the most awe inspiring palatial mansion!
But most importantly, we hold a book that was miraculously preserve by the Hand of Almighty God for now over 3500 years!!!!
Have you ever stopped to think about what all these writings had to go through to get from the first author, Moses, to us today?!?!
As the authors of the Gospel Way commentary on the preservation put it:
Old Testament writings began about 1400 BC (all dates in this section are approximate). Let us trace the preservation of these Scriptures up to the time of Christ.
Joshua 1:7,8 – About 40 years after Moses wrote, God commanded Joshua to meditate on Moses’ words and obey them without variation.
Joshua 23:2,6 – About 60 years after Moses wrote, Joshua charged Israel to exactly keep all Moses wrote.
1 Kings 2:3 (about 960 BC) – About 400 years after Moses wrote, David charged Solomon to keep God’s commands as written in the Law of Moses.
2 Chronicles 34:14-19,29-31 (about 605 BC) – About 800 years after Moses, Josiah found Moses’ book of the law and used it to restore temple worship. The Scripture was accurate and authoritative though God’s people had been in apostasy for years. (Compare chapter 35; 2 Kings 22,23.)
Nehemiah 8:1-3,8 (about 450 BC) – About 900 years after Moses, following an apostasy so great it led to the Babylonian captivity, the Israelites again reestablished the service of God by reading and following the book Moses wrote. (Compare verses 13-18; 9:3.)
By His providence God kept His promise to preserve Scripture so accurately it could be understood and obeyed as authority throughout Old Testament history.
And the most incredible thing about this is the accuracy with which the text of the Old Testament was preserved!
In 1947, the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered. These documents sate back to about 150 years before Christ.
And they are AMAZING!!
First, they contained every single book of our modern Old Testament save one—the book of Esther.
Prior to this, the oldest copy of the Hebrew Old Testament was the Masoretic Text, which dates to about 900 AD.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, they contained the Great Isaiah scroll.
Two things:
Isaiah 53 was there in its entirety.
Many scholars had long believed that this was a later addition to the book of Isaiah by New Testament believers.
They just could not believe that a writer from 700 years before Christ could have written that accurately about Jesus Christ.
The Great Isaiah Scroll matched with incredible accuracy the Masoretic Text.
Not one single variation exists that changes any doctrine in the text!!!
How amazing is that!!!
These copies were written some 1000 years apart.
Only a mighty God could preserve His Word like that!!!
And if you think that is incredible, wait until you hear the miraculous preservation of the New Testament.
Greek Manuscript total: 5,856 [2]
*Earliest manuscript: AD 130 [3] (John Rylands Papyrus: P52)
Non-Greek Manuscripts (Armenian, Latin, etc.): 18,130+
Total Manuscripts: 23,986
Over 4,000,000 (4 Million) pages of hand written manuscripts!!!!
God’s Word survived despite intense efforts to destroy it.
In 175 BC the king of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, ordered the Jews, on pain of death, to destroy their Scriptures and worship the Greek gods.
But Judas Maccabaeus saved the books and led a revolt that won independence for the Jewish nation. (Today, Jews celebrate this event at Hanukkah.)
Roman emperor Diocletian’s order to have Christianity outlawed, its leaders killed, and their Bibles burned.
As a sign of God’s providence, the next emperor, Constantine, legalized Christianity and paid for fifty new hand-written copies of the Bible.
How Can We All Live By It?
How Can We All Live By It?
VI. WE SHOULD DELIGHT IN EVERY WORD OF GOD!!
VI. WE SHOULD DELIGHT IN EVERY WORD OF GOD!!
Look at what our passage says should be our response the mighty power of God to preserve His Word:
Verse 92—Unless Your law had been my delight, I would then have perished in my affliction.
Who here can say that had it not been for the Lord, I wouldn’t be where I am today?
Who can testify that it is only by the grace of God that I am who I am?
Who can shout with JOY that the Law of God keeps me on the straight and narrow when on my own I would be doing things I shouldn’t?!?
Verse 93 says that God’s precepts give LIFE.
How many of you can testify that the Word of God has given you new life?!?
That Jesus Christ, the Word of God, came into my life and made me not want to be the man I once was?!?
How many of you know that the inerrant, infallible Word of God was preserved for you and me so that we can treasure God’s Word in our heart and live by them, not because doing it will get us to heaven—but because to love the Lord Jesus is to follow all His Commands?!?
How many of you can shout for Joy, because God has saved you, and all you wanna do is praise His Holy Name!!!
You see, the more I study the Bible, the more I am in awe of:
The power of God
The Grace of God
The Mercy of God
And the incredible, wonderful, providential, preservation of God’s Word.
Closing Prayer and Invitation
Closing Prayer and Invitation
