Rely on the God-inspired Words of Life - not just 'inspirational' thoughts!
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Dear Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
When we think of the witness to the truth and even more to the Person of Jesus Christ that we have the privilege and equipping to do - its a pretty incredible power and role that God’s entrusted to us. I hope you’ve felt when in introducing the Belgic Confession - we saw that this biblical task - is to confess and declare to a world in desperate need - glorious truths of who God is and how we can be saved in jesus Christ.
I hope in setting forth the biblical truths of how we and our neighbours can know real and important truths of God as creator in general -gives you something to talk about and just give your experience of God from His beauty, order, power in Creation, and also in His providence of the world and your life, and His providence of the moral universe, that there is justice and good ness that evil must be addressed. So much that an unbelieving b or member of your family and you can discover about God. As a believer you need this basic information about God as Creator and Master - to relate to him rightly - he has a right to call the shots in the world, and we are to look to him as an overflowing source of good. But as hopeful as these discussions about God in general can be, there was something jarring - only enough to hold sinners liek you and me and your neighbour accountable to God, ultimately they know this God but are not relating to Him as the true God - we and they want to press down, and distort this knowledge to have a God made in our image more tame and one where we are good with him and he fits into our lives not us into His!
Your neighbour may quite rightly bring up the point that though like 98% of the human race believes in divine in general, we’re all like those blind men in Kipling parable of the elephant, all have a piece, and we give our opinions - about who God is what He wants, how we are to live - but just left with opinions, so what ever floats your boat is good enough. In this way Scripture would be like a wax-nose, mould it to say whatever you want! And this is where we must profess not just a God in general, a distant God like the Muslims that is ultimately impersonal and unreachable, or a pantheistic divine like Hindus and New Age where God is so close He is is actually his own universe and we get absorbed into His being, and our personality and His personality don’t really matter or come into it. We profess a God who is personal and the source of personhood, who transcendent and immanent acts in this world, and who as the Supreme and Fullest Personal Being - communicates what His actions and plan are and what they mean. That was Article 2 about how there is a Special Revelation from God in which God communicates His very heart to us and the very Person of Christ, and he does that with verbal precision. This is one of the most important things we must witness to unbelieving neighbours and family, God speaks - to us. The creation will tell them that God is great and awesome, eternal , just; but we distort that and it can’t tell us what God’s plan and purpose and will and most importantly what His salvation of humanity is all about. - we need to testify to each other and the world, that God has spoken in His Word and supremely leading to His Son - with clarity and power the most important message through His Word. the holy Scriptures.
Now to believe that he did so in the past - speaking world into existence, or speaking to Noah and Abraham of his saving plan in the middle of a lot of suffering and evil. Speaking to Moses about how forgiveness and worship and kingdom way of living. How he spoke even through the words of Jesus - believing that He actually spoke in human words, and through his prophets in the past is one thing. But that would leave us still like those blind men, grabbing one part of what we think God said and trying to put it together now years and years later.
Special revelation is about God’s will His law and about His saving actions and what they mean what they call us to. Both law and the gospel come to rich fulfillment in Christ who is the pinnacle revealing God’s special message to us. But the apostles finishing up the complete revelations of what God has done in Christ, and what it means for us, they don’ t want you and your neighbour - to look to God’s message just as a some human myth - a good human opinion about God.
Let’s compare it to the confidence with which you speak to your neighbour let’s say about gardening or a car repair. Let’s say you’ve read to books and tried a certain technique once, and know someone who it worked for. And your neighbour is just about to spray or aerate or something, or is trying change his brakes for the first time. And you say, oh I know something about that I heard that, and my brother-in-law did - neighbour kind of look at you are you sure.
But imagine now you are Simon Kiezebrink or Clarence Kort, or Walters, and you fix cars for a living - sausage finger grease monkey - live eat breathe cars, Or you’ve attended the Royal Botanical School you really know PLANTS - and your neighbour is timidly about to start a job but is stuck. and imagine the confidence and joy - oh here is how you do it, with this tool, exactly this way. Booom
God wants us to be able to witness to the truth of His word in that matter, and for that reason in explaining the Christian faith to unbelieving Priince Phillip, to his confused neighbours, who were religious by tradition or superstition and fear, third article is about how we get God’s Message to us with all its authority. God truly speaking to us with words! Great mystery and the Holy Spirit certainly at work in opening our eye to God’s Word, but we are to know what God’s Word claims about itself and its importance. We are to be able to say with full confidence THUS SAYETH THE LORD! IN fact so important is your testimony to what God’s word is and how we got it that we have 5 articles on it. This article focuses on how we have gotten it in actual and precise written words!
KEY TRUTH: Now God personally & specifically speaks to us, not through experience or tradition, but through the Holy Scriptures!
Peter with the apostles spells out how back in the past and actually at the pinaccle of God acting and speaking this world , they actually heard his voice from Heaven, and they experienced and were eye witness to what God was actually doing in Jesus, But then thrust of this article and our text comes in
2 Peter 1:20-21 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 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.
knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 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.
Here we are faced with a stark either/or. Either this is mans’s words about God, or it is God’s Word about man. And we need to testify that God fully and truly speaks with these words, and they give humanity everything we need to know - not about every secret of creation - but everything we need to know about how to live - that’s God’s law, and more importantly how we are to be saved!
A. Scriptures are Sent & Delivered by God, not the Will of Man.
This is God’s way in the world, he acts and he speaks. Even before the fall we needed his interpretation of life, his plan, his rules, his promises and goal, his covenant. God creates and then sends his interpreting world, sets up a relationship with Adama and Eve, and verbally communicates in words of human language. Initially oral words, spleen passed down, but afterward committed to writing - for instance the generations of, toledot - Adam, Noah, Abraham Of - 10 of them, quite possible passed down all the way to Moses. But God is at work, and he speaks, and he causes to have written down His communication about what he’s doing. And this is progressive in nature, not all at once , and leading to supreme revelation of the the Son Jesus, fullness of God’s will and plan, and personhood. Jesus said those Scriptures the whole story pointing to me leading to me, they speak of me. Unfolded it all, But here, Peter says, God didn’t just speak through those prophets in various ways - they, not according to their interpretation, they were under another influence. God was using them as instruments to deliver the exact words he wanted for his people to have to follow and understand him. Put simply the source is God, the instrument is the human author!
And so Peter says the source of those words not in humans, but in God - and he carried those human authors like a wind picking up a ship and blown along to final destination that the wind wants to blow it. Luke used the word in Acts for a ship blow and driven by the wind! Benjamin Warfield, says, think of it like the sun shining from heaven, there are those human authors, each own personalty, own time in history, God not always dictating His word to them, mechanical dictation, but using their full personally and culture - to speak in words we fully understand - and he causes God’s special revelation to be inscripturated with the exact words God wants spoken to us.
The writer of Hebrews in the NT says there are various and rich ways God spoke in the past like this:
Hebrews 1:1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,
But all they spoke and God caused to be recorded leading to the fullest revelation of His Son”:
Hebrews 1:2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
God sent Moses after a new administration of his covenant of grace, and then said:
Deuteronomy 18:18-20 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him....
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’
Jesus was that final prophet who spoke in Jehovah's name, revealing his very essence to us. And Peter is saying that’s what the whole of Special Revelation is about - even what Jesus caused to be written y giving His Spirit with insight into what his birth, life, death, resurrection, his enthronement in heaven all mean. Revealing both His will, his law, and his salvation, his grace! You and I are to have an understanding of how inspiration by the Holy Spirit worked
B. Understand ‘how’ inspiration by the Holy Spirit worked
When I say to you or you to your neighbour the bible is inspired, in our day what inspired means - is inspirational - and they and you may agree oh yeah we all need to some inspirational reading to guide us into greatness of human spirit. While its true God works to illumine the readers or hearers mind that’s not what God-breathed words mean. Lets be clear, Peter is saying that the Holy Spirit caused those exact words to be written according to his plan, as a faithful witness and explanation to God’s actions and being and will, so that they are God’s words, even though also truly human words from those authors.
This is why ESV and NIV chose to use the literal Greek words in describing what the Scriptures are:
2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Its not just inspirational , just people spouting human words about what they think is nice and good, and their opinion of what God does. God breathed out these words, Yes, using fully human authors , not violating their imagination and vocabulary - but as BB Warfield illustrated it: stain glass windows rfeact all different way but exaclty for the pattern God wantsed to leave us with - HIs will, his actions, all about what He does in history and in human lives culminating in the fact of Christ. The whole OT prepares us for the person and work of Christ and his kingdom and the whole NT, as Christ fulfills not repudiate or replaces the OT, fullfills and explains Christ to us, looking back. The author of Hebrews says the final word is Jesus: who is the exact imprint of God’s glory. And now the NT looks back an shows us that perfect revelation of God to us - yes how to be saved , but also his glory and how to glorify God by living in him. This book isn’t just designed to get you to heaven, but to bring you to Jesus and transform you into his glory - and its by God speaking these actual words into your life about Himself that this can happen.
God didn’t just inspire the writers, leaving the words up to them, but these very words . That’s what liberal Christianity wants to say. But inspiration doesn’t mean God took human writings and then breathed his stamp of approval on their reflections. No, their writings are inspired, God-breathed those words. But this is also not like some fundamentalists, who would say: like book of Mormon or Qran of the Muslims - God dictated these words - mechanical view of inspiration, only divine and no human element. Biblical reformation truth is that inspiration is ORGANIC> Charles Hodge of Princeton puts it this way: The HOly Spirit didn’t take Jews and make them write in the Greek mould, Did not change their mental habits, or peculiar style of each author- but take those into His sovereign plan to get final words the He wants them. Yes, human words, must fully understand context and meaning back then - to get the significance for today. But because inspired and directed by God, holy words without error in everything they seek to communicate - Muslim will say, human so with error. But like Jesus fully human, yet fully from God and therefore nothing wrong or sinful mixed with it.
This is Jesus view of the Bible and what it claims for itself. Again and again in the gospels we here Jesus saying: And Moses said and he quotes teh OT and in the very next breath he says, See didn’t God say . What Moses said, God said.
And we can see that the apostles inspired by the Holy Spirit, as Jesus promised, having his teaching and saying: John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
Christ finishes his work, and then give the completion of what the revelation of Jesus, the New Covenant means for us and how to live in the grace. That’s the NT. Like the OT it gives us everything we need for God’s glory and our salvation. Not only the fact we are saved in Christ, but that in Christ - our selfishness and sin is drawn back, so now we can reflect this Christ, so in this creation we can enjoy what God intends and work for it! That’s what we have also described for us in the NT. God doesn’t reveal all the secrets of the universe in this book -ie. quantum mechanics, but only what is needed for our salvation and for us to live our lvies for his glory. Everything we need for faith and godliness! And so we hear Peter is saying,
2 Peter 3:15b-16 … just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
what Paul wrote some hard to understand - but these are the Holy Scriptures, the same technical word for the OT Scripture. Holy Writings. SO, God’s Word includes the NT writers
When God saved His people in the great OT event of the Exodus that picture God saving the world through the NT event of the Cross and Resurrection. It is recorded that His people Israel praised the LORD, “who came down” to communicate with his people” Nehemiah 9:13-14
You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant.
You see what the Holy Scriptures were to Israel and they are the same for us in the NT - God works that great deliverance and inaugurates His kingdom - and then in these words He comes down to speak to us and give us - the communication from God that we need! That’s how Moses described what was going on too: Exodus 34:27-28
And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.
These are the words of the covenant - the explanation and then all the implication that flows from His saving act in Jesus.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy: It is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.
The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching,
John Calvin said, we would be tossed and agitated in our minds, if we just kind of knew the God events of the past like a myth and had no words from God telling us what those events are and what they mean. So Calvin says, therefore, “he sent us another and better help” in the Scriptures. Why? “To gather us more closely and intimately to himself.”
C. The Purpose of the Scriptures is salvation & redeemed living
Isn’t that just what our confession says too:
Belgic Confession 3: Afterwards our God—because of the special care he has for us and our salvation -commanded his servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit this revealed Word to writing.
And can’t you testify of this to your neighbours and friends and family and co-workers. Can you imagine a neighbour commenting, Why do you talk about the Bible, say as the good nbook says, Yes I really think this because … Or a friend or family members asking Why do you do devotions. Why read it at your meals? Even a spouse why listen to podcasts. Our witness must be not just how awesome God is, nor even how God is personal and speaks, but we must witness that His written word is how to get close to Him. His written Word is how Jesus guides us and ministers to us.
Do you believe this for you neighbour -
Romans 10:17 So faith cometh from hearing and hearing by the word of God.
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Ultimately, mere spiritual inspiration isn’t going to transform anyone’s life. But you testifying of the God we all know in general, you spelling out He is personal and speak and acts and saves, and that in concrete historical yet personal way - he will speak to you through these Words, these Holy Scriptures - that’s a testimony necessary for someone to embrace Christ as Saviour and as Lord. That’s what our family Bbile read at our tables, our open Bible in personal devotion time, a pulpit Bible at the center of worship - that’s what our witness must communicate!
Dear Congregation,
Today some like in the days of deBres will say God just speak through general revelation, Deists like B Franklin, Spinoza, agnostics - is a God not involved and not personal. Others will say all myth of mere human speculation know one can really know. Some within the church will say, God speaks by just what the church says - its traditions - just fall in line. Others in the church like in DeBres day, God doesn’t only speak through Scripture and that is kind of boring and not enough relevance for today. Where God really speaks is in extra-ordinary experience dreams, tongues, revelations - ongoing revelation - that does not centre on Christ and his saving work!
But what we and our neighbours need to hear from our witness, there is a God we all know him in some way, He wants you to know Him better, and you are accountable to that, and He has provided say by speaking by prophets and apostles and Supremely His Son Jesus and his method of speaking is in that message inscripurated for all time - here! The Bible is not just some account of what God said or someone’s experience of God, but it is God’s sovereignly appointed divinely authorized message of will and His saving plan in Christ. It is His word speaking to us today as surely as it was when He first inspired those writers to deliver to His people!
I don’t doubt that you know you need to speak about God and about salvation, but don’t neglect that to each other in our homes in the church and to our neighbours, we must praise God for and hold out the Word of life - Only in this light can we meet and be transformed by Jesus!
At the ripe age of 96 one of the greatest and clearest voices explaining biblical Christianity has died, J I Packer. Grew up receiving a type writer instead of bike , because a terrible head injury. Dozens and dozens of books - aging, weakness is the way. But most influential has been his explanation of how these 66 books are God’s very words to us. Gospel Coalition - need help understanding how and why and what the focus is, - your voice and mine raised up something so reasonable ad so important - there is a God and He speaks, sovereignly in history and personally through His Word about Jesus and His kingdom to us!
Article 3: The Written Word of God
We confess that this Word of God
was not sent nor delivered by the will of men,
but that holy men of God spoke,
being moved by the Holy Spirit,
as Peter says.
Afterwards our God—
because of the special care he has
for us and our salvation—
commanded his servants,
the prophets and apostles,
to commit this revealed Word to writing.
He himself wrote
with his own finger
the two tables of the law.
Therefore we call such writings
holy and divine Scriptures. 2 Peter 1:16-21