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2w53Article 1 The Scriptures
2w53Article 1 The Scriptures
“The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. it is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.”
15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Here is a list of verses that go with this article.
Exodus 24:4; Deuteronomy 4:1-2; 17:19; Joshua 8:34; Psalms 19:7-10; 119:11,89,105,140; Isaiah 34:16; 40:8; Jeremiah 15:16; 36:1-32; Matthew 5:17-18; 22:29; Luke 21:33; 24:44-46; John 5:39; 16:13-15; 17:17; Acts 2:16; Acts 17:11; Romans 15:4; 16:25-26; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Hebrews 1:1-2; 4:12; 1 Peter 1:25; 2 Peter 1:19-21
Southern Baptist are known as people of the Book. People of the Bible. Every SBC church is different in one way or another. Some are small, some are giant. Some meet in huge arena-type settings and some meet in portable buildings. All SBC churches have at least this one thing in common, our love for the Bible. The Bible is the unity that binds us together.
God’s Revelation
God’s Revelation
The Bible is 66 books divided into the Old Testament and New Testament. This book is different than any other book, for it is not a collection of human opinions about God but is in fact God’s own Word. Baptists love and respect the Bible as the Word of God.
The Bible is God’s written revelation of Himself to us, the Bible is one of God’s most precious gits to us. Psalm 119:127
127 Therefore I love your commandments
above gold, above fine gold.
Through His written Word, God has spoken to His people, taking the initiative to reveal Himself to us and to disclose Himself to us in a very real and understandable way. If God had chosen to not reveal Himself, then we would have no way of concrete knowledge of God and all mankind would be left in the dark searching for answers. We would have millions of ideas of who God is and what He is like and how He wants us to act. God shows His love for us by the fact that He chose to reveal Himself in His word. He chose to not leave us in the dark.
God chose 2 ways to reveal Himself to us.
General Revelation - God’s making known His nature and purpose through nature and history.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
The intricate balance of creation, the beauty of all earth and its varied landscapes, the wonder of a sunset, all these declare God’s greatness and glory. I don’t understand how someone can look at creation and believe that all of it happened by chance.
God reveals Himself to all people through the moral faculty we call conscience. God also uses our knowledge of good and evil, of right and wrong, points us to the perfect moral character of our Creator.
20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
2. Special Revelation - God’s making known His nature and purpose through the written Word and His Son Jesus Christ.
25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—
God has told us everything we need to know about Him in His Word. We don’t need any new revelations about Him. His has spoken in His Word.
Let’s try and identify which of these items is either General or Special Revelation.
___ 1. The beauty of creation
___ 2. The conscience within us
___ 3. The Bible
___ 4. The book of Isaiah
___ 5. Mountains, rivers
___ 6. John 3:16
Read Romans 1:20 below. Check two things we can learn about God from what He has created.
Romans 1:20 “20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”
__ God’s love through Christ
__ God’s power of God
__ God’s divine nature
__ The work of the Holy Spirit
Items 1,2, and 5 are general revelations. 3,4, and 6 are special revelations.
If general revelation is available to all people, why do we need the Bible? Paul tells us the answer to this question by explaining that our sin blinds us to a full understanding of God’s revelation of Himself in nature and in our conscience.
25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Our sin so distorts our spiritual vision that we love the lie and hate the truth. God loves us so much that He graciously provided us special revelation through His divine Word to teach us more about His nature, His redemptive purpose, and His will for our lives.
God for Its Author
God for Its Author
The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to humanity, and God is rightly known as the Author of all Scripture. As Baptists, we affirm that the Bible was written by men divinely inspired. It is commonly said of writers that we like, to say that they were inspired. Or after an especially moving musical performance, we may say the composer or performer was inspired. Is this the same thing when we say the men who wrote the Bible were inspired?
Of course not! If it were, we would stake our lives on it because it would only be a collection of insightful writings about God. Some have taught that the Bible is merely the product of an elevated human consciousness. Others have suggested that the Bible is unevenly inspired. Some parts, they argue, are more inspired than other parts. This view places the human reader over Scripture as judge, deciding what parts are inspired and what is not and can be ignored.
Others teach that God only inspired the ideas contained in the Bible, not the words of Scripture itself. This dynamic theory of the Bible’s inspiration holds that God gave the human authors basic ideas that they developed in their own ways. At the other extreme is the dictation theory, which sees the human authors as passive instruments of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, simply taking down divine dictation for the record.
Basil Manly Jr. was one of the four founding faculty members of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1859. He summarized an understanding of the full inspiration of the Scriptures with these words: “The Bible as a whole is the Word of God, so that in every part of Scripture there is both infallible truth and divine authority.” This is the conclusion of the verbal plenary theory of the Bible’s inspiration. It means that the Bible’s inspiration is verbal - extending to the very words themselves - and plenary, or full. We affirm that every word of the Bible is inspired and that every word is fully inspired.
Inspiration: the breathing of God’s Spirit on human speech and writing to produce the text of the Bible.
Match each theory of inspiration with its definition by placing the correct letter in each blank.
___ 1. The dynamic theory
___ 2. The verbal plenary theory
___ 3. The dictation theory
a. The authors were passive instruments who recorded divine dictation.
b. Every word of the Bible is fully inspired.
c. God gave human authors basic ideas that they developed in their own ways.
1.c, 2.b, 3.a
We believe the verbal plenary theory expresses the way the Bible describes its own inspiration. The Bible’s word for inspiration is God-breathed. 2 Tim 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. The Holy Spirit breathed this Word through human authors divinely chosen for this task. God used their personalities, writing styles, and personal experiences to accomplish His perfect purpose. These human authors were not passive stenographers; rather, the Holy Spirit worked through them, inspiring them so thoroughly that they were moved to write exactly what God intended - right down to the very words.
The result of divine inspiration is that we have exactly the Bible God intends for us to have . Nothing is missing. Nothing is included that should not be there. For this reason we affirm that the Bible is the very Word of God and does not merely contain the Word of God. God speaks to us through His Word, and where the Scripture speaks, God speaks.
Mark each statement as True or False
___ 1. We have exactly the Bible God intends for us to have.
___ 2. God guided the writers of Scripture to produce His truth.
___ 3. Some parts of the Bible are more inspired than other parts.
___ 4. God gave the writers of Scripture basic ideas that they developed in their own ways.
___ 5. The Bible does not deceive us in any way.
___ 6. God used the personalities, writing styles, and life experiences of the authors of Scripture to accomplish His perfect purpose.
True - 1,25,6
False - 3 and 4
Salvation for It End
Salvation for It End
1 “Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.
Because the Bible is the uniquely inspired Word of God, it is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. Every word is to be trusted and obeyed. God had reminded us time and time again, that He gave us this Word so that we could have life and be faithful to Him.
The Bible is our authoritative guide to God’s truth and is the sure foundation on which to build our lives and stake our hopes.
A Christian loves the Word of God and demonstrates this love by obeying it and by being faithful in personal Bible study. A church demonstrates a hunger for the Bible by its desire and support for true biblical preaching and teaching. Nothing less will do; no substitute can satisfy our hunger for the Word of God.
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As God’s Word, the Bible is fully able to accomplish all God intends for it to do. Isaiah 55:11
11 So will My word be which goes out of My mouth;
It will not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the purpose for which I sent it.
The absence or neglect of God’s Word is a scandal in any generation, bu we can see the devastating loss that comes to churches, denominations, families, and individual lives when God’s Word is ignored, distorted, or disobeyed. The absence of God’s Word leads to death.
This truth serves as a powerful reminder that the primary purpose of the Bible is to tell how to be saved. This is what the BFM means in saying that the Bible has “salvation for its end.”
The Bible - God’s written Word- fulfills God’s redemptive goal by pointing us to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word. Jesus is the ultimate focus of every verse of Scripture, and as He explained,” you pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, yet they testify about Me.” John 5:39. The Scriptures find their fulfillment in Christ and reveal the salvation that comes by faith in Him.
A division between Christ and the Bible is a sure sign of false teaching. Christ is honored when the Bible is taught, preached, and believed.
Pick the primary purpose of the Bible (choose one)
___ teach us the Golden Rule;
—— warn us about false religions;
—— tell us how to be saved;
—— help us face the problems of life.
The main purpose of the Bible is to point us to Jesus Christ and to tell us how to be saved. Other purposes include teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness, and equipping for good works.
The Bible is authoritative
We recognize the Bible’s authority because we recognize God as its author. If God is the author of the Scriptures, every word of the Bible bears God’s own authority. Christians have no right to dismiss or question any biblical text, for all Scripture is God-breathed.
The Bible is Infallible
God never fails, nor does His Word. We can trust that the Bible will always accomplish God’s purposes. It is the strongest weapon in the hands of a believer Eph 6:17
17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,
Human wisdom will fail, as will human witness, but the Word of God never fails!
If the Bible cannot be trusted in all it teaches, how can we have confidence that it can be trusted in any of it teachings?
The Bible is inerrant
The Bible is truth -all truth - and contains no error of any kind. The affirmation of the Bible’s inerrancy is directly connected to its inspiration, infallibility, and authority. We can be confident that the Holy Spirit fully inspired every word of the Bible in its original text. Because God is the Bible’s ultimate Author, an denial of inerrancy denies His perfection and undermines the Bible’s authority.
One of the simplest and most profound statements of the Bible’s perfection came form Jesus Himself. On the night of His betrayal, He prayed to the Father for His church with these words: John 17:17
17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
The Bible is sufficient
We are not to add to the Bible or to subtract from it. God warned his people in unmistakable terms, “you must not add anything to what I command you or take anything away from it, so that you may keep the commands of the Lord your God I am giving you” (Deut 4:2). Our minds are to be captive to the Word of God, deciding all issues from biblical wisdom. This means that a Christian worldview based on the Bible will necessarily conflict with worldviews based on human wisdom.
The Bible is eternal
This is true simply because God is eternal. 1 Peter 1:24-25
24 for
“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.”
And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
The Bible is not a passing deposit of divine revelation. It cannot be superseded by another word or revelation. Ultimately, it is completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, and its truth endures forever.
Match each term with the correct definition.
__ 1. Authoritative a. The Bible is all truth and contains no errors of any kind.
__ 2. Infallible b. God’s Word will endure forever.
__ 3. Inerrant c. Every word or the Bible bears God’s own authority.
__ 4. Sufficient d. God’s Word never fails.
__ 5. Eternal e. We are to rely on God’s wisdom found in the Bible rather than the world’s wisdom.
c
d
a
e
b
One way to show appreciation for and trust in the Bible as God’s Word is to read it each day. God has promised to bless us when we meditate on His Word. Consider meditating on this verse this next week. 2 Tim 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
