Mark: Theology 10-The inspiration of scripture [Mark 12:35-37]

Mark: Theology 101-The inspiration of scripture []

The next couple of weeks we will only be looking at three verses and focus on three things…three very heavy things…we’re going to jump into the deep end of the pool, so to speak, and look at three theological truths. Don’t get scarred because I used the word theology, because that’s a good word. Theology is, “the study of the nature of God and religious things.” And we want to be well informed Christians… So let’s look at our text and jump right in.

Stand for the reading of the word of God []

Prayer: When God’s word is truly preached God’s voice is really heard…let us hear from you today.

We’ve been studying Mark for a while now and what we’ve seen in the last several weeks is the religious leaders questioning Jesus, trying to discredit Him. Last week Jesus was questioned about the greatest command, Jesus has also had his authority questioned, he’s been questioned about taxes, about the resurrection…and He has answered each question in a way that, no one is asking questions any more. Now it’s Jesus’ turn to ask the question..and when Jesus asks a question it turns the theologians on their heads.

Jesus ask the question of all ages…who is the Messiah? He asks the question concerning the identity of the Messiah or savior. This is the question above all questions. While all the other questions asked of Jesus may have had their place…this question Jesus asks is the most important one. He has already asked his disciples in private, “who do you say that I am” now he asks the question in public. Who is Jesus?

Today’s message is very theological, because what Jesus says is theological. Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m not really into theology, I just love Jesus.”??? That statement is a mystery to me, because, how do you know who Jesus is without theology??? We need theology to answer why it is we love Jesus.

So the next couple of weeks, we’ll camp out here and look at three theological truths Jesus lays out for us. The inspiration of scripture, the divinity and humanity of Jesus, and the Trinity. Three essential theological points.

Today’s focus is on...

The inspiration of scripture []

Notice first in verse 35 it says, “Jesus answered and said, while He taught in the temple” “taught” [Greek didasko] instruct, it’s the verb form of the noun “didache” doctrine. i.e. Jesus is teaching doctrine…here is a theological lesson from Jesus [our focus is on theology because Jesus’ focus was on theology]. So the question is posed in verse 35, “how is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David? Then verse 36… “for David himself said by the Holy Spirit…then he quotes from .

We’ll come back to the question next week as we look at our second theological point. First we look at one phrase Jesus said about David in verse 36… “David spoke by the Holy Spirit” This is a reference to the inspiration of scripture. The scribes an Pharisees believed in the inspiration of the OT scriptures, this is not a new concept. What is the inspiration of scripture?

The Baptist Faith and Message [SBC doctrinal stance] says, “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. All scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.”

What is divine revelation? God reveals Himself in two ways to man…by General Revelation and Special Revelation. General Revelation is what Paul writes about in , “From creation of the world God’s invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made. As a result people are without excuse.” i.e. Through creation and history God is evident, God has made his nature and purpose known through creation and history. But Paul goes on to share that even though God is revealed through a general revelation man still “exchanges the truth about God for a lie and worships the creation instead of the creator.” . i.e. our sin distorts our spiritual vision and we love the lie and hate the truth.

But God graciously provided mankind special revelation through His divine word to teach us more about His nature, His redemptive purpose, and His will for our lives.

The Bible is God’s special revelation of Himself to humanity, and God is the author of all scripture. Spurgeon said, “In the bible I find God speaking, not man’s voice, God’s voice, God’s words. The bible is God’s bible and when I see it I seem to hear a voice spring up from it saying, ‘I am the book of God, man, read me.”

The Bible was written by men divinely inspired by God. Now what does that mean? We often hear of people, whether it be musicians, artist, or writer …people such as Shakespeare, Bach, Picaso…who were inspired to create a masterpiece or perform remarkably. Is the bible inspired that way?

Of course not. If the bible was just a collection of insightful writings about God people would not stake their lives upon it. Through the ages many ideas have been thrown out there about what the bible is. I’ll give you a list of wrong ideas about scripture then we’ll look at the right view of scripture.

Some have suggested the bible is merely the product of elevated human consciousness. That elevates the human writer too high and judge of scripture.

Some have suggested the bible is unevenly inspired, i.e. some parts are more inspired than others. This view places the human reader over the scripture as judge, deciding what parts are more important than others.

One theory about inspiration is, that God inspired the ideas contained in the bible and not the very words itself. This view is called the dynamic theory of the bible’s inspiration, it holds that God gave human authors basic ideas that they further developed on their own.

Another theory is the dictation theory, this sees human authors as passive instruments of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, simply taking down divine dictation for record, like a stenographer in a court room typing down everything that is said. This is not true either…this is actually the Muslim view of their scripture, that Ali, through the angel Gabriel, dictated to Mohammad the Quran, which he wrote down.

These are all false views of inspiration of scripture, what we believe as Christians is that 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 called the verbal plenary view of the bible’s inspiration. Simply put, the bible’s inspiration is verbal-extending to the very words themselves-and plenary-of full-affirming that every word of the Bible is inspired and every word is fully inspired.

The bibles word for inspiration is ‘God-breathed’. [] Inspiration is the breathing of God’s Spirit on human speech and writing to produce the text of the bible. The Holy Spirit breathed this word through human authors divinely chosen for the task. God used their personalities, writing styles, personal experiences to accomplish His perfect purpose. This is something far more difficult to comprehend and far more significant than just a group of people sitting in a room waiting to write down what they hear.

The Holy Spirit worked through them, inspiring them to write down exactly what God intended. The bible records what God intended 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. So God speaks to us through His word, and where the scriptures speak, God speaks.

Baptist theologian John L. Dagg said, “the men who spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost were the instruments that God used to speak and write His very word. We preach, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.”

W.A. Criswell, theologian/pastor, 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 and die.”

Because the bible is the inspired word of God, every word is to be trusted and obeyed. God reminded his people over and over again that He gave His word so that they could live by it and be faithful to Him. God told the children of Israel time and time again to obey His word, and if they disobeyed his word it would bring disaster. The formula God used for Israel in was, obedience to God’s word leads to life and blessing, disobedience leads to catastrophe and disaster.

The bible is our authoritative guide to God’s truth and is the sure foundation on which we build our lives and place our hope on. , Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.

Christians love God’s word and we demonstrate that love for God’s word by obeying God’s word and by being faithful in personal study of God’s word. Sunday morning should not be the only time you are in God’s word…you should be in God’s word daily!

A church shows it’s hunger for God’s word in supporting the true preaching and teaching of God’s word, nothing less, no substitute can satisfy a hunger for God’s word. God’s word may not always be what we want to hear but it is always what we need to hear.

So as Christians we show our love for God’s word by diligently studying it, by obeying it, by listening to it, and by sharing it. Professor of SBTS, A.T. Robertson said, “I have been studying, preaching, teaching, and writing about the NT for over 50 years. But I never open my Greek NT without finding something I had never seen before in it.”

As God’s inspired word, the bible is fully able to accomplish all God intends for it to do. As the book of Hebrews puts it, “the word is living and breathing and sharper than any two-edged sword []. As God said in , “My word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.”

As Paul wrote in , “all scripture is inspired [God-breathed] by God and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” God promises to work through His word to accomplish these good things in us individually and corporately in the church. The absence or neglect of God’s word in any generation is devastating to the individual or church or family or nation. Lives are ruined when God’s word is ignored, distorted, or disobeyed.

The reason is the bible’s primary purpose is to tell us how to be saved. , “I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

The bible-God’s written word- fulfills God’s redemptive goal by pointing us to Jesus Christ, the word made flesh. Jesus is the ultimate focus of every verse of Scripture. Jesus Himself said in , “you pore over the scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, yet they testify about me.” The scriptures find their fulfillment in Christ and reveal the salvation that comes only by faith in Christ.

Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God, but we would have no authoritative knowledge of him apart from the bible. The written word and the incarnate word must never be seen in contradiction or competition to each other. A division between Christ and the bible is a sign of a false teaching. This has been popular in recent years, just love Jesus, don’t worry about what the bible says. Friends Christ is honored when the bible is taught, preached, and believed!

While the bible does teach, rebuke, correct, train, and equip…it’s main purpose is to point us to Jesus and to tell us how to be saved by faith in Him.

One question posed today, is, can we really trust the bible? After all it’s been so long since it was written that how can we know it’s still original? That’s a good question, the bible is the most preserved book in history, in fact there is remarkable evidence of it authenticity. For example, before the 1500’s there were nearly 2000 original manuscripts preserved that the bible we have today was translated from.

In 1611, the KJV bible was a literal translation of the original language. During the 1900’s hundreds of manuscripts were discovered, 1947 the dead sea scrolls were found in a cave in Qumran [I visited that place and got to see some of the manuscripts]. These were the oldest manuscripts found and they were word for word exactly the same as what we had already had. More evidence of the authenticity of the preservation of scripture.

Today there are nearly 6,000 Greek manuscripts of the NT making it the most preserved and reliable writing in history, to compare with other writings, the next most preserved writing is the writings of Plato and there is less than 100 copies of it…see the difference in comparison? I tell you that to point out that the bible is completely trustworthy. We would say

The bible is authoritative: the bible’s authority is derived from God’s authority, because God is the authority, God’s word is authoritative. Every word of the bible bears God’s own authority.

The bible is infallible: God never fails, nor does His word. We can trust the bible will always accomplish God’s purposes [] The bible is the strongest weapon in the hands of a believer [] Human wisdom will fail, human witnesses will fail, but God’s word never fails!

The bible is inerrant: The Bible is truth-all truth-and contains no error of any kind! Adrian Rodgers said, “you read in the OT phrases like, The word of the Lord, or the word of God, or God spoke, or the Lord said, is used nearly 4,000 times. If the bible is not the word of God it is the biggest bundle of lies on planet earth. But the Bible is truth, it’s absolute truth without error!” The inerrancy of scripture is vitally important to affirm. That the bible is the truth without any mixture of error. Jesus himself affirms this in His prayer in , when praying for believers he says, “sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”

The Bible is sufficient: we are not to add to or take away from the Bible [] As Christians we are to rely on God’s wisdom found in the bible rather than the world’s wisdom. Our minds are captive to the word of God, deciding all issues from biblical wisdom instead of earthly wisdom.

The Bible is eternal: God’s word will endure forever. This truth is shown to us in a story in the OT in the book of Jeremiah [36]. In the last days before Judah was overthrown by Babylon. King Jehoiakim took the scroll Jeremiah wrote under God’s inspiration. And as the king had the scroll read to Him he took a knife and cut the scroll and threw it into the fire till it was consumed. But Jehoiakim discovered, what many other enemies of the bible have discovered…the bible cannot be destroyed. , “the word of the Lord came again to Jeremiah and said, ‘take another scroll, and once again write the very words that Jehoiakim burned.”

The bible, God’s word, cannot be destroyed or extinguished. God will not allow it. And you know what is really neat? It’s the same Holy Spirit that inspired men of old to write God’s word…is the same Holy Spirit that convicts and converts you and I upon the hearing of God’s word. God’s word, the redemptive story of Jesus Christ, has by the Holy Spirit penetrates into the hearts of rebellious men and women to draw them to Himself.

I am so thankful that I had parents that exposed me to God’s word through the church at a very young age. Even when I was this little wiggling, nuisance not paying attention to anything going on. Don’t think for a minute that I was sitting in church as a young boy thinking, “Oh my what a wonderful message the pastor is preaching today,’ or “how wonderfully insightful was the Sunday school lesson.’ No, I wasn’t paying any attention at all as a young boy…but somehow, God, in His mercy and by His grace penetrated the light of His word into that darkness of mine.

That’s the mystery of it all, when I wasn’t looking for God or listening to God, He was pursuing me and wooing me by His word and somehow changed this cold, hard, dead heart of mine…and He can do the same for you.

Maybe you need a health does of God’s word this morning, it’s all right there in black and white, God’s word…the very source of life. We will revisit this next week as we look at Jesus divinity and humanity and the Holy Trinity. Let’s pray.

God shine you light into my heart through your word in a new way, that you may be revealed to me more.

When God’s word is truly preached God’s voice is really heard…let us hear from you today.

God we need to read our bibles more

God shine you light into my darkness. Amen.