God's Word is Eternal

Pastor Matt Davis – God’s Word Is Eternal – Isaiah 40:6-8 Introduction So if you have your Bibles Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 40. We'll be reading verses six through eight. It says, "The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever." As I read through Isaiah this week, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekial is where I'm at, this verse in particular, verse eight, the word of the Lord has forever that stood out to me. Because there's a lot of conversation going on today. A lot of naysayers, a lot of people who say, "How do you know that the Bible was God's Word? How do you know that? People didn't just change it? How do you know that it was preserved that it's the same thing that he said back then?" Others say, "Well, that was 2000 years ago, or 3000 years ago. That's not relevant to today." Know, we've been, with the exception of resurrection, this is the fifth month... had a... I can't believe I had a look at the date to see that, the fifth month of the year, with the exception of Resurrection Sunday, we've been in the Old Testament the entire year. I promise, we're only about three weeks away from the New Testament. We've been in the Old Testament for five months and has there been anything we've read that's not applied? There's nothing we've read that does not have a direct parallel to today. This morning we were reading in Isaiah two, we were talking about idols, we were talking about what God will do, and we discussed a little bit about how it was applicable to today. Two weeks ago we were at the beginning of chapter two and we discussed the dependence on government, dependence on technology, dependence on military might in relation to God telling them how they were too dependent on their government and their power and their wealth and their prosperity. At the beginning of the year, I preached in Leviticus and nobody thinks Leviticus applies because Leviticus is the book of the law to the Levites, you know, to the Israelites what they're supposed to do, but we talked about the parallel of the blood of the lambs. And I believe it was chapter 25. I can't remember where we were five months ago, but I remember it being Leviticus it may have been 25 and then we paralleled that to the cross to how we are cleansed. We paralleled it to how the sacrificial system points to the sin and the need for a savior. A couple of months ago, we spent six weeks in the book of First Kings. We talked a lot about faith about one God; proving the one God. I don't think that there is anything we can read from Genesis to Revelation that does not directly apply to us today. Because what does the book of Hebrews say? It says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, right? So that means if it was bad 4000 years ago, it's bad today. So everything that the Bible says about idolatry, about adultery, immorality, the same sins that were committed before the flood and after the flood, and during the time of Christ they’re the same sins that are committed today are the same things that we do today that the Bible talks about. So does it apply? So as we ask these questions, as we talk to these naysayers, or to the people who believe it's not applicable to us, we have to answer and what does God say? He says his word is forever. It's always applicable. It's preserved. It is good for reproof, for correction for teaching as the New Testament says. Now I don't think we all ask these questions of ourselves very often. I think it's applicable to our understanding. It's good for us to know. And I ask these questions of myself all the time. I get into deep studies, where I start reading stuff in, the devil starts getting back here in my mind and he starts saying, "Do you really believe that God parted the sea so they can walk across the dry grai.. ground." Now, how many of you have got that in your head as you were reading it? It's common. With the ark, especially with the ..the studying I've been doing lately it's come, "Do you really believe that the whole earth flooded? And to have all kinds of animals caught on there? The dinosaurs?" And do I really believe it? Yeah, I really believe it. But the devil gets in there. He starts saying, "Are you sure?" We talked about this a few weeks ago, the tem... or a week and a half ago, the temptation of Eve. Now the devil didn't outright tempt her to sin. Instead, the devil caused her to question what she knew to be true. And so while we may not ask this all the time, or we may not even think of it, these are questions we need to answer: Was His word preserved? Does it apply? Is it the same? And these questions are important not only so we can answer the naysayers but there are important to answer for this: where does our hope lie? It lies in God. It lies in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and we find that in The Word of God. So if this is not The Word of God, do we have any hope? If The Word of God could have been altered, if it could have not been preserved, if we could have lost it, do we have any hope? So that is why it is so important to answer the question, is this The Word of God? Is it true? Can we trust in it? I watched a video last night. I watch a lot of videos. And most of them are religious in nature. And somebody said in the video last night that the scientist say that religion is... is faith based and what makes them superior to us is that they're evidence based. Science is superior to religion because it follows the evidence. But is that true? The reality is, you can't have faith without evidence. That's why the Bible says that faith is the substance of things hoped for by the evidence or things not seen. We don't just believe we look and we see the evidence. We see it all around us. Now, is there an element of faith? Is there an element of believing what we can't see or what we cannot prove? Yes. But it's not blind. It's not just hope it's evidence based. Because when we get the night sky; when we look out and we see the millions and billions of stars; when we think of the fact that no other planet can support life; we've been searching. Don't you think if there was other life out there by now, with the telescopes we have, with the way we can zoom in with what we can do, don't you think we would have found something? But think of where the earth is in relation to the sun; the atmosphere just right to support; water. We've not found this much liquid water anywhere else. How about the magnetic field of the Earth? The way it repels most of the harmful energy from the sun. When we think about that, is... is there any possibility or inkling have a chance that it just happened by accident? I mean think about that. What... what are the chances, not just that nothing exploded into everything and then matter started colliding together as hydrogen forming helium and... and up and up and up until we had rocks that can crush together and form a great big ball, but then somehow that great big ball ended up the right distance in the sun and somehow ended up with just the right electromagnetism system to support life. Like really? If you look at pictures of the Milky Way galaxy, another galaxies what shape are they in? They have these spirals. Look at the ocean waves. Do you know the curve on the ocean waves are the same degree as the spirals of the Milky Way galaxy. Ever pay attention to the shape of a snail? What shape is it? It's got the spirals. It is the same patterns with the same mathematical formula and think about it, is that just chance? Like, if everything just blew up and that's how it formed why do we see repeated patterns? What do we know of architects? Well, when you get to know architects very well When you start looking at buildings, you can start looking and say I know who designed that. Or I know who inspired that design because what do architects do? They have their.. a style. Well God has a style. So I've just pointed out evidence right there. We see it. But it's science really evidence based. If science was evidence based what would we do? We come up with a hypothesis, right? I think so and so must be true. And how do we test... How do we know if it's true? We come up with a series of tests, we have controls, we have variables and we test it and we observe it. That's how we know gravity is true. I'm not going to do it with this because I like my phone too much. How can I prove the existence of gravity? If I let go of my phone it's gonna fall, right? I can prove gravity exist. That is Evidence Based science, you follow the observation to the conclusion. So how about the Big Bang? What is the most fundamental law of science? The most fundamental law science is that for every material action, there must be an external... Or for every material reaction there must be an external action that is greater than the reaction. There must be a cause that is greater than the reaction; meaning no reaction that we can get chemical, physical, or otherwise, can be greater than the thing that caused it. That's the most fundamental law of science is everything physical has to have a cause and that cause has to be greater. So how... um... Stephen Hawkins, everyone knows who Stephen Hawkins is, and I can't remember book if you want to know what book it's on my Facebook page recently because I posted a comment about it, but he wrote in his book that it is impossible for something to come from nothing except for galaxies. You can't get something from nothing unless it's the existence of a galaxy. He believes that came from nothing. In other words, the great mind of our century says that he believes that this universe, this vastness, came from nothing. It just exploded! He doesn't believe there was any material, any atoms, nothing in that pinpoint of matter, no even matter, it just exploded. Is that evidence based? In fact I would say the very fact that he believes that came from nothing is evidence of God. It came from God. God is the external cause of the universe that is greater than the physical action. So it's not faith based. This is why we need the Word of God. Because if we follow the evidence, if we follow the archaeology, if we follow the logic, what makes the most logical sense. So we need to follow the Bible but we need to have this: we need to have the understanding of where it came from and the understanding that it is the inspired Word of God. If we can trust it. Now Isaiah is writing in a time of warfare. Isaiah is writing warning the people repent, repent, repent. Isaiah talks about the captivity, about war, and in chapter 40 here the first and second verse of chapter 40. Isaiah writes about comfort and peace and verse two, he says the warring is over. But the people they're worn out, they've been in war after war after war. They lost people, they've lost soldiers, they lost loved ones, and their enemy is still big, still mighty. And now they're being told the warring is over. And they're looking and going What are you talking about? The war is over? Those Who Oppose God Should Not Be Feared And so God says in verses six through seven, this is the... not relevant to God's word enduring forever, but it's for context. He says, "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass." In other words, he says that those who oppose God should not be feared. If the word of the Lord speaks and says this will happen, it shall happen; because the people is grass we wither. We're here but for a short time now I'm already more than a quarter of the way through my lifespan. Some of you, I'm not trying to make anyone feel elderly or old, but some of us in here, we're already halfway to three quarters of the way there our lifespan, our expected lifespan in the US. But how many of us feel like we've been here that long. As I look past, just the last three years that I've been here, doesn't feel like that long. We're nearly halfway through 2021 and it... doesn't feel like it just began? We're not here very long, at all. In fact, I think if we were to go back and ask grandpa Adam, if he was here very long, I don't think he would say he was. Because our existence is short. But not only is our existence short, what are we compared to God? We're weak, we're feeble. I would say we're stupid compared to God. If we're going to compare our intellect. So God says that people are grass they whether because I blow on them. Now if we get a nice.... It looks pretty calm out there right now. The twine right there is moving. But if we get a wind coming up from St. George today, you know, we just got some moisture on up on the mountain I saw green. We get a wind up from St. George up blows across the field today, before I leave here to drive home, how green do you think that grass is going to be? That wind with no humidity right now, that wind will be, not wind, that grass will be dry. And that's what God comparisons us to. He says it... It withers because I blow on it. All God has to do is blown the fall. So our enemies are not to be feared. But this isn't just our enemies. This is those who stand against God are like the grass like the flowers of the field. They will wither and fade now how about those who stand with God? I think our bodies are gonna whither still, unless God raptures us, but the whither that's talking about here, we're not going to whether that way, we're not going to perish. We're going to be restored. So this is a promise, those who stand against God have nothing to fear. (Editorial comment**** That was not what I meant, and I only caught it after listening to the service for this transcription. Usually, I correct myself when I say something stupid in the service, but I apparently never recognized that it came out that way. Those who stand against God DEFINETLY have something to fear. What was meant, and obviously not conveyed, was that those who oppose God have nothing that we should fear…******) Now, if my God is for me who can stand against me? And we shall not whether and It's... it's a warning: if you stand against him, you shall wither, you shall fade away. And then he drives the point home with... with the point of today's message. God’s Word is Eternal in verse eight he says, "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever." Isaiah compares God to man. Man is feeble; man is weak. We are nothing compared to God. God can breathe on us and we fall over. But God is great. God is eternal. God's word endures forever. I mean, let's just think about how long it's endured already. To us it's a long time. But roughly 6000 years ago, He said that they're being light and I still see a light outside. He said that there'll be a firmament, a divide between the waters. We're not drowning right now. We're not swimming around that firmament still there. I'm pretty sure in a few hours the sun's gonna go down and the moon is gonna come up. And I'm pretty sure about seven o'clock tomorrow morning, roughly, the sun's gonna come up again. I'm pretty sure that the earth is going to continue rotating on its axis; that we're going to continue moving around the sun. This is all stuff upheld by the word of God alone. And it's been upheld for quite some time, by my standards. The word of the Lord endures forever. So I have some scriptures in here, I want to talk about the Word of God. I want to focus first, on the eternal nature. In Psalms 119 verse 89 it says, the psalmist says, "For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven." "For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven." What does that say to us? That says, forever. When the Bible says forever does that mean for the next 1000 years? For our lifespan? For the existence of the earth? No it means eternally! His Word is settled. What He has spoke forth has been declared; it's settled; it's already done. So let me ask you a question: are we waiting for God to defeat Satan? No. It's already settled in heaven. Satan's already been defeated. So, are we hoping that we're going to end up with resurrected bodies? No. It's already been settled, His Word is settled. What He has declared forth is as if it's already done. And Matthew 5:18 Christ says, "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Now has the law been fullfilled? Christ fulfilled it. But what's he say? He says, till heaven or earth pass, His Word is going to endure but it's going to under longer than that because Christ says in Matthew 24:35, He says, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." So I have a question, how many people have heard that after the 12 apostles died, the original twelve apostles the word of God disappeared? If... if we've at all spoken to a Mormon missionary, we've heard that. That's what they believe. They believe that the authority of God disappeared. They believe that scripture from that point forward got altered. Why do they say the gospel needs to be restored? They say it needs to be restored because it disappeared. But what does Christ say? He says that though heaven and earth shall pass away my words shall not pass away. That means that we can have faith that his words are his words. We can have faith that they don't just disappear. It doesn't need to be restored, because he says that his words will survive the passing of our Earth. Well it's going to take a lot to destroy Earth, it's going to take an act of God and if His Word will survive that surely the 12 apostles dying was not the end of the gospel. Christ, in addition, tells the apostles, he talks to Peter, and tells them that the work that they do will last. Well what work is he referring to? He's referring to the kingdom building, the church building, the church planting. We have a book called Revelation and in Revelation there's two chapters chapter two and three, known as the seven letters to the seven churches in Asia. By the time the book of Revelation is written, do you know how many apostles were left? Just John. He was the only apostle left. I'm gonna turn there to Revelation chapter three. Revelation chapter three. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start in verse seven. So we have people that teach that the gospel ceased that the authority disappeared. That words God was no longer here the way it was meant to be. But what does John write? He writes this right before he dies, "And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;" Who is John talking about? He's saying, This is what Christ says; what God says. He says, "I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name." Let me ask you a question, does that sound like a gospel a church has lost the authority of God? Does that sound like a people group who with the passing of all but one apostle who was imprisoned on Patmos island, does that sound like the authority is gone? The apostleship is gone, the gospel is left and they're not being taught anymore. This sounds like to me a church that is secure a church is solid; that is built on the truth of Christ; A church that is preaching the gospel of Christ; that has the authority of God. Because God says, "I have put before thee an open door and no man can close it." Well, don't you think that when Christ John to send that letter to Philadelphia, that Christ's knew that in the next five years John was gonna die. So why would he write that that no man can close that door? That you have this open ministry, this missionary opportunity? Why would he say that and make himself a liar knowing John was gonna die? So the Word of God survived. The Word of God survived the flood. It survived the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. It survived the passing of the 12 apostles. Because, I mean, let's think about how stupid would have been to go through all that effort to plant the church and get the Great Commission going only to kill it off when the 12 original people died. What was the point? They were baptizing They were raising up leaders. Philadelphia is one of two churches that Christ had nothing bad to say. So it's not even just one. They can't even just say there was one church that was like that. Because there was two. I think the other ones Smyrna. Verse eight of chapter two, "And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." Those are the two churches that Christ had nothing bad to say about. Does that sound like his word disappearing? But we have people who teach it did; people who believe it did. So then people say, Well, how do you know that it's the same? Well because God says, "I will preserve my word." Here's something cool to think about have. Has anyone here ever play the game where you get in a circle? And you have like 20 people. And so I'll start with the message. I'll whisper it in someone's ear, right? What do they do? They take that message and whisper it in the next person's ear and the next and the next around the circle right? By the time it gets over here, the message is already different. By the time it gets over here, it's different again, it's not... Over here it's altered, it's changed a little. It's no longer the same. But over here it's a different subject. Then it gets back to me who started it and I don't even know what they're talking about anymore. Right? I think we, is it fair to say everyone's probably played that game in here? So here's what's cool about about the Bible. How can I trust the Bible? Some facts about the Bible, at least 40 men wrote the Bible. I say at least because there's a couple of books that we don't exactly know who the author is. We don't know who wrote the book of Job. We don't know who wrote the book of Hebrew. Yeah, Hebrews. We believe it's Paul that wrote Hebrews. But we don't know that it's Paul. We don't know who wrote Job. So there's a couple books the author's not... we're not firm on so we know of at least 40 identified authors in the Bible. That's a lot of authors. Then those 40 authors lived a timespan of 1500 years from Moses who wrote the first five books to John, who finished, is 1500 years of history. So we're not even talking the two minutes around a circle where they can collaborate. You know where they should keep it. We're talking almost from us back to the time of Christ in history, and not even on one continent! On three different continents, no phones, no email, no Facebook chat to collaborate. And has the message changed from Genesis one to Revelation 22. The message is the same all the way through the Bible. How can I trust the Word of God? Well, because I can't trust 20 men to sit in a circle and in the matter of a minute get the same message repeated around, but somehow 40 men over nearly two millennia, wrote a book with the same message from cover to cover. So how do we know that the word of God is preserved? Because the Bible has something in it that we can't even do with email. But we can't even email each other back and forth and keep a consistent message. Yet the Bible was done that! Here we are. We're 2000... 2000 years later from the close of Canaan. We've had scribes you know how the Bible was originally circulated as somebody took the original copy. You know, imagine this is just paper and, and this is a clean sheet of paper A, A, B, B and they did that for the whole thing. Then they took that and they passed it on. They got a new clean scrolling from the top. And it wasn't just that after they finished, they took it and they gave it to somebody else and then that person took it against a good known copy and then they compared it letter by letter. Not word by word; letter by letter. So it got written letter by letter and then compared by somebody else to verify and then it got circulated. And so we're not even talking of book that got written by 40 People across millennials and kept the message. But we're talking about a book that was hand written, hand copied over and over and over hundreds, thousands of times. And we have fragments of those today. We don't have the originals. But we have fragments and in all the fragments we find what do we find? We find that they're the same. So we know that the word of God has preserved. So if we know that the word of God is preserved, if we know that it is eternal, then we know that is perfect. Psalms 19:7 says, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." And from the New Testament, James 1:25 says, "But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." The word is perfect. It was preserved so because it was preserved because we know what's not altered, we know it's perfect. And because we know that it's perfect, we know what's good, we know that it's sufficient. Romans 7:12 says, "Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." And First Timothy 1:8 says, "But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;" The Eternal Nature of God’s Word is Foundational to Our Hope So can we trust in the Word of God? Yes. The Word of God is the foundation upon our hope or part of the foundation. Our foundation is Christ. But where's Christ revealed? He's revealed in the word. I talked with somebody two days ago. No, I think I sent him a message yesterday. We... we carry the conversation. He read Genesis chapter one in Genesis chapter two, and he came up with two different conclusions about the creation account. I told him, I said, "Well, you're wrong." He says, "What? No, I just read it like that." I said, "You're wrong." He says, "And why do you say that?" I said, "Because if you can read two scriptures, especially one chapter apart, and come up with two contradicted conclusions then you're wrong. You have to go back and you have to figure out where you messed up and fix that contradiction." And he says, "And who made up that rule?" Okay, good question, but he's just he's hanging on to those. I said, "Common sense." Common Sense did. Why? Because of God can contradict himself. If he can say one thing here and come over here and say another thing and change his mind on a whim what hope do we have? The reason we have hope is because God is perfect. God is good, God is unchanging. God cannot lie. God cannot confuse. He's not the author of confusion. That is why we have hope. So the moment you start saying, well, it doesn't have to agree cover to cover is the moment that you have broken the foundation for our hope. But because it's perfect, because it agrees throughout, because it's good we know that though we are a sinner and nothing we can do about it. We know that Jesus Christ took on flesh, that He is God, the Creator of the heavens in the earth. We know that He lived and died on the cross. That He went to the grave and we know that He rose again. It's not a silly fairy tale. We know it because it's perfect. It's good and because of the evidence. I talked about that a lot on on Resurrection Sunday. So when we depart today I, I hope that we depart with trust and the Word of God, that we depart knowing that it's the Word of God knowing that wasn't changed or altered. Knowing it has not lost its applicability to today. Knowing that it's good for reproof, good for correction, good for teaching and knowing that it points us to the person, to Jesus Christ, by whom we get saved. ***Let's go ahead and pray. ***