Our Baptist Confession: The Scriptures

Introduction

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 any 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.

The Baptist Faith and Message, Article I

Throughout the existence of the Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptists have been known as the People of the Book.

Some Southern Baptist Churches preach topically. Some are committed to expository, verse-by-verse preaching.

Some meet in Community Centers and others meet in gorgeous old church buildings.

Some use hymnbooks and others turn off the lights and have lights cutting through machine-made fog during worship.

But one thing that binds us all together is that we are People of the Book.

This is why our Confession begins with “The Scriptures.”

That is our subject matter for tonight as we look at Article I of the Baptist Faith and Message.

The Bible

What I am about to say may seem like review, but let’s be clear:

When we talk about the Scriptures, we are talking about the 66 books of the Bible.

39 Old Testament books.

27 New Testament books.

The Bible is an amazing book:

Written over a span of 1600 years

Across 3 continents

Africa, Asia, Europe

Written by over 40 different authors

Some of them kings and poets

Others fisherman and prophets

Written in 3 different languages:

Hebrew

Aramaic

Greek

And yet with all of this diversity, it has one unified message:

The plan of God for the salvation of His people

The Bible is a book unlike any other.

And I want to give you four truths about the Word tonight that we can glean from Article I:

1. The Bible is God’s revelation.

2. The Bible has God as its Author.

3. The Bible has salvation unto God’s glory as its end.

4. The Bible is trustworthy truth.

1. The Bible is God’s revelation.

Article 1 states that the Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to man.

In the Word, God has taken the initiative to reveal Himself to us and disclose Himself in a real and understandable way.

Without this revelation, we would be left groping in the dark only with the facts we can learn from Creation.

I say that because the Bible is not the only way that God has revealed Himself to humanity.

He has also done this in Creation.

The Puritan Thomas Watson said that God has two books:

His work in Creation

And His Word

When we speak of God’s revelation in creation, we call that General Revelation.

General Revelation is God’s making known His nature and purpose through nature and history.

There are things we can learn about God simply from looking at Creation.

Mountains show us that there is a mountain-Maker.

The stars tell us that there is a creation beyond the planet we live on made by Someone much greater than us.

Holding a little baby tells us that existence is a delicate miracle that would never come to pass unless a Divine Architect was doing the designing.

Psalm 19:1 ESV

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Romans 1:20 ESV

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.

So according to Paul, from the general revelation of Creation, we can understand something of God’s divine nature and power.

And yet, a pagan that worships false gods and knows nothing of the Bible, cannot look at a tree and understand that God sent His Son to die for sinners.

He cannot get, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” from starting at a toucan in the rainforest.

This is where we need the revelation of God in the Bible for His people. When we think of the Bible, we call it Special Revelation.

Special Revelation is God’s making known His nature and purpose through the written Word and His Son Jesus Christ.

We need Special Revelation because sin has distorted our understanding of the Creator in General Revelation.

Because of the sin in us, we exchange the truth of God for a lie.

Romans 1:25 ESV

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.

God has been merciful to not leave us in darkness.

General Revelation is for every person who ever lived.

But Special Revelation is for God’s people.

In His great mercy, He has revealed His Son Jesus to His people, so that in Christ we would have the Ultimate Revelation of God.

And where do we get our information about Christ?

From the Scriptures.

In fact, this is the only way for us to know Jesus Christ.

We must know Him from the Scriptures.

Apart from special, saving revelation—the revelation that centers upon the Lord Jesus Christ—we do not and cannot know God.

JI Packer

If we want to know God through Jesus Christ, we have to do more than look up and look around in the created world.

We have to look to the Special Revelation of the Bible.

This is where saving knowledge is found.

2. The Bible has God for its Author.

This is how the third sentence of Article I begins.

It has God for its author.

Charles Spurgeon said it this way:

This volume is the writing of the living God. Everywhere I find God speaking: it is God’s voice, not man’s. The words are God’s words, the words of the Eternal, the Invisible, the Almighty, the Jehovah of this earth. This Bible is God’s Bible; and when I see it, I seem to hear a voice springing up from it, saying, I am the book of God: man, read me.

Charles Spurgeon

Now these words may seems strange because we began tonight by saying that the Bible has 40 different authors.

How can it have 40 different human authors and also have God as its Author?

This is where we must understand the doctrine of Divine Inspiration.

Inspiration: The breathing of God’s Spirit on human speech and writing to produce the text of the Bible.

We see this concept in 2 Timothy 3, where Paul says:

2 Timothy 3:16 ESV

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

Theopneustos—breathed out by God.

The concept of divine inspiration contains a few different theories.

Two we reject and one we hold to.

The Dictation Theory: The authors of the Bible were passive instruments who recorded divine dictation.

In other words, the authors are simply taking notes for God as He dictates the Word to them.

The Dynamic Theory: The authors of the Bible were given some basic ideas by God but they wrote the Scriptures themselves, without His help.

We say that both of these theories are wrong:

The Dictation Theory takes too much of man’s involvement away from the Bible being written.

The Dynamic Theory takes too much of God’s involvement away from the Bible being written.

Instead, we turn to:

The Verbal Plenary Theory: Every word of the Bible is divinely inspired through human authors.

The inspiration is verbal: it extends to every single word of Scripture.

The inspiration is plenary: it is comprehensive—fully inspired.

This is how the Bible attests to itself in 2 Timothy 3:16—every word is theopneustos—God-breathed.

How exactly does this work?

The human authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit, inspiring them so thoroughly that they were moved to write every word that God intended.

2 Peter 1:21 ESV

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And yet, as we read the Bible, we still see the personalities of these men.

We see the different styles of these men.

That is because God used their personalities, their writing styles and their personal experiences to accomplish the task of completing His special revelation of the Bible.

They truly wrote—and He truly inspired.

This means that where the Scriptures speak, God speaks.

It means if we want to hear from God, we simply need to come to our Bible and open it.

And as we do that, we do not need to have any fear that we have less of a Bible than God intended.

We don’t have to worry that some parts are more inspired than others.

We don’t have to worry that the Bible is simply the ideas of man.

Instead, we can be confident we have exactly the Bible God intended for us and that it will not deceive us in any way.

We can be confident that the Word is solid ground because all of it is inspired by God.

It is the perfect treasure of divine instruction.

In the early 1900’s there was a young Southern Baptist student at Baylor University who was studying the Word. His name was WA Criswell.

One of his friends at school had walked away from the Christian faith. He told Criswell, “Look—the Bible is just another book.”

Young Criswell said, “I know the Bible isn’t always easy to understand, but I will never end up treating the Bible like any other book. It is the Word of God. The universe is sustained by His Word. We are convicted and converted through it. The Word keeps us from sin. We walk by it, live by it, and one day we’ll die by it. Our assurance of heaven is only through the Word. Understand it all or not, like it all or not, the Word is the foundation of life, and without it our souls wither up and die.”

Criswell would go on to be one of the most famous Baptist preachers of the 20th Century.

He pastored FBC Dallas and it grew to 28,000 members under his preaching and teaching.

Close to his death, at 90 years old, Criswell looked back on his ministry and said:

“This I believe and this I proclaim: God’s Word is perfect, literal, inerrant, infallible and totally trustworthy.”

He made good on his words that he uttered to his friend at Baylor.

Divine inspiration should motivate us to have a faith like Criswell—a total trust that the Bible is from God.

3. The Bible has salvation for its end.

This is one of the things that the Baptist Faith and Message teaches us in Article I—what is the end goal of the Scriptures?

It says that the Word, which has God as its Author, has “salvation for its end.”

God’s Word leads to life.

This is a principle we see all the way back in the Garden.

Genesis 2:16–17 ESV

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

If Adam disobeys God’s Word, he will die.

If Adam obeys God’s Word, he will live.

God’s Word gives life.

We also see this in the days of Moses:

Deuteronomy 6:1–2 ESV

“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, 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.

Fearing the Lord and keeping His Word would lead to long days.

God’s Word leads to life.

The Bible is our authoritative guide to possessing life and overcoming death.

When it is disobeyed, there is catastrophe.

But when it is obeyed, it is a light that will us to life.

Psalm 119:105 ESV

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

It is a lamp to keep us on the path of life.

The main way that the Word of God does this is by showing us that we can’t stay on the path on our own and turning our attention to the One who stayed on the path for us.

The Word shows us that obedience leads to life and then it shows us that we haven’t been obedient.

But the Word does not leave us in misery—it reveals Christ to us—the One who was perfectly obedient.

The One who died for us.

The One who rose again.

The One whose Spirit brings a new birth to our hearts and by His grace, enables us to truly obey the Word of God.

In fact, Jesus tells us that the Scriptures point us to Him as the One where life is found:

John 5:39 ESV

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,

Jesus is the focus of the Scriptures.

All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.

Baptist Faith and Message, Article I

They offer life in as much as they offer HIM.

So then, Christians are people who believe that the Word shows us the way to life and Christians are people who trust in the Word to keep us following Jesus unto the day where we enter into eternal glory.

This is why we can confidently say that the Bible has salvation for its end.

The end goal of God’s revelation is the salvation of His people.

God has given us His Word that we may have life.

This is why we love the Word. This is why we don’t hesitate to be known as “People of the Book.”

We study the Word.

We sit under the teaching of the Word.

We obey the Word.

We do these things because we have trust in the Word’s ability to accomplish that which is sets out to do—which is giving life to God’s people.

Isaiah 55:11 ESV

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

God’s Word will not return to Him void.

It will do what Paul tells Timothy the God-breathed Word will do.

The word will see to it...

2 Timothy 3:17 ESV

that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The Word will make the Christian mature and equip them for the work of the Kingdom HERE, but it will also lead that Christian down the narrow path, until they enter into the Kingdom FOREVER.

John Fawcett, an 18th century Baptist from England who wrote the hymn, Blest Be the Tie That Binds, said this about the Bible:

Bright as a lamp its doctrine shine, to guide our souls to heaven.

John Fawcett

This is what we trust the Word to BE and this is what we trust the Word to do.

It has salvation for its end.

4. The Bible is trustworthy truth.

The third point leads to the fourth tonight.

To say that the Bible has salvation for its end is a big claim.

The next question that we might naturally have is:

Can we trust it to get us to that end?

Can we trust the Bible in life and death?

Our confession says we can— “All Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.”

But more importantly, the Bible says we can:

Psalm 19:7 ESV

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;

The Word is SURE. That means it is worthy of trust.

I want to close out our time tonight by giving you five brief reasons as to why we can be confident that the Word attests to itself rightly. Five reasons we can trust the Word.

1. The Bible is authoritative.

We have already established tonight that the Bible has God as its Author.

Because God is the Author, the Word itself is authoritative.

Every word of the Scriptures has the authority of God stamped on it.

This is why we want to try and track everything that we say and do back to the Scriptures.

We do not count a centralized church or a creed or a religious opinion to be our ultimate authority.

We aren’t interested in practicing the inventions of man.

We want to reform the church to the standard of the Scriptures.

That is where authority lies.

Let me illustrate our beliefs about the Bible’s authority in this way:

Imagine there is a plane crash and everyone survives and they are stuck on an island like the show Lost.

A few days into being on the island a guy named Brian finds a case of sealed Bibles that were on the plane and they wash up on the shore.

Brian starts reading the Bible and is convinced he is a sinner and Jesus is God and he believes and becomes a Christian.

A few others grab Bibles and they read them and they come to the same conclusions as Brian.

They start meeting together on Sunday mornings.

They start taking the Lord’s Supper together.

They start baptizing each other.

Brian starts teaching the others from the Bible at their gatherings.

Do you know what they have?

They have a church.

Roman Catholics would say, “You can’t do that.”

They would say, “You must have THE centralized Roman church to tell you what the Scriptures mean and there is no church outside of their authority.”

But we Baptists say, “No.”

Rome has no authority—the Word has authority.

And by the authority of the Word, and the Christ it reveals, local churches are formed and assembled.

The church does not stand above the Word.

The Word stands above the church.

And the Word stands above the members of the church.

And we base all that we do on its authority.

You can trust the Bible because with God as its Author, it has authority.

2. The Bible is infallible.

Since God doesn’t fail, we can say that His Word will not fail.

And that is what that Word infallible means— “Incapable of failing.”

It is the Sword of the Spirit and since the Spirit doesn’t fail, neither will the Sword.

This is what makes it such a powerful weapon in the hands of the believer.

Compare it with human wisdom and we see the difference:

Human wisdom fails all the time.

For example—for thousands of years, even the most advanced human societies practiced bloodletting.

There was a belief that by draining bad blood, balance would be restored to the body.

We now know that is ridiculous.

But that is an example of how the wisdom of man will fail you.

God’s Word is not like human wisdom.

It has no folly in it.

It has no directions in it that leads to wrong turns.

It is perfect—all the time, every time.

So, the Bible is infallible, and that’s the first reason to study it; it is the only Book that never makes a mistake—everything it says is the truth.

John MacArthur

3. The Bible is inerrant.

To say the Bible is inerrant is to say that it is truth without error.

It is “without any mixture of error,” as Article I of the Baptist Faith and Message says.

If you walk into the main headquarters of Lifeway—the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, in Nashville, TN, you will find a plaque with this written on the wall:

We accept the Scriptures as an all-sufficient, infallible rule of faith and practice, and insist upon the absolute inerrancy and sole authority of the Word of God.

JM Frost

Frost was the guy who led the first official effort of our Convention to create a Sunday School board and provide materials to all of the Convention’s churches.

If your Sunday School class uses quarterlies, you can thank Mr. Frost.

And you can see from his words that a deep belief in the Bible being without error is ingrained in what it means to be Southern Baptist.

Some people don’t like the word inerrancy.

They say it is unnecessary and divisive.

I mean—is it really a big deal if we don’t believe the Bible is without error?

Well yes—it is a big deal.

If we say the Bible is not inerrant, we are saying the Bible has mistakes present in the text.

Do we think that the Spirit who inspired the Word is capable of error?

Do we think that the Spirit who inspired the Word is incapable of keeping error out of the Word?

Why would we think that God would deliver that which is less than perfect to His children?

Another reason that we must hold to inerrancy is that God cannot be separated from His Word.

If I read To Kill a Mockingbird, and I think it is a great novel, but I have a few criticisms, who am I really criticizing?

It’s not the book itself. It is Harper Lee—the author of the book.

In the same way, when we stand over the Bible and criticize it and accuse it of error, we are criticizing the Author.

We are accusing God of error.

And if we do that, we are not just saying the Bible is not inerrant, we are also going back and saying it is not infallible.

For if the Word has error, then it can certainly fail us.

The doctrine of the Scriptures, in many ways, stands or falls with inerrancy.

It is not a doctrine we can let go of and we have no reason to do so.

4. The Bible is sufficient.

We do not add to the Bible.

We also do not subtract from the Bible.

That is because we believe the Bible is sufficient.

Deuteronomy 4:2 ESV

You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you.

The Bible possesses all that we need for life and death.

The Bible possesses all we need for salvation and godliness.

We are not in need of tradition.

We are not in need of the words of a pope or a council.

We have the sufficient Word.

In light of this, the entirety of our worldview is based upon the Scriptures.

If the Bible gives us truth for all of life, then we must base all of life upon its truth.

We do not base our worldview on the wisdom or tradition of men, but of the Word.

You see its sufficiency in Article I:

It is the “true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds and religious opinions should be tried.”

Where else would we go? The Scriptures have all that we need.

5. The Bible is eternal.

We would not say this about any other book.

And that is because no other book is from God.

The Bible is eternal because God is eternal.

1 Peter 1:24–25 ESV

for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

This is illustrated for us in the Old Testament account of Jeremiah and Jehoiakim.

In Jeremiah 36, in the final days before Babylon invaded Judah, God commanded the prophet to record God’s Word on a scroll.

When King Jehoiakim learns about the scroll, he demands that it is read before him.

As it is read, the King would cut up the scroll and toss it in the fire.

Jeremiah 36:23 ESV

As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a knife and throw them into the fire in the fire pot, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the fire pot.

But this is what happened next:

Jeremiah 36:27–28 ESV

Now after the king had burned the scroll with the words that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned.

God’s Word is eternal.

You can’t burn it up and have it gone.

It is an eternal deposit of truth and God was able to dictate His Word to the prophet once again.

The famous philosopher Voltaire learned this the hard way as well:

One hundred years from my day, there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker.

Voltaire

One hundred years later, he was dead and gone and his house was used a printing press to print and store Bibles.

You can’t make it up.

The Bible is eternal divine revelation. It cannot be surpassed. It will not be forgotten.

And it is completely fulfilled in God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

Next week we will get into the doctrine of God in Article II.

But The Baptist Faith and Message doesn’t start there.

Why?

Because without the Scriptures we would know nothing about God the Father, God the Son or God the Holy Spirit.

This is the basis for our doctrine.

This is the jewel case of truth given to us by God.

And the greatest jewel in the case is Jesus Himself.

Praise God for His authoritative, infallible, inerrant, sufficient and eternal Word, which reveals Christ to us.