Sermon Tone Analysis

How I Know For Sure My Bible Is Inspired By God (1 of 5)

Series:How Do We Know for Sure That the Bible Is God's Word?

Stan Coffey

Hebrews 1:1-2

 

        Today we are going to begin a brand new series.

It will be a brief series about 5 or 6 lessons.

This series is entitled "How Do We Know For Sure That The Bible Is God's Word."

I know most of you believe the Bible is God's Word, but I am not sure that all of us know why we believe the Bible is God's Word.

How do we know for sure that the Bible is God's Word?

There is a doctrine that we hold dear here in this church and most conservative Bible believers hold dear called the Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy or Infallibility.

Meaning that every word of the Bible is true and accurate.

Now properly understood, this means that this is a teaching that the Bible contains no errors applied to the Bible's original documents.

The original writings of the Bible came directly from God through human authors.

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Hebrew of course, is an ancient language that has been revived today and is spoken in Israel.

Aramaic is also an ancient language and is sort of a combination of Arabic and Hebrew that is still spoken in many of the lands in the Middle East today and was spoken in Jesus' time.

If you saw the movie the Passion of the Christ, the words of Jesus, the words of a few of the characters in that movie were in Aramaic, because it was a commonly spoken language in Jesus time.

The Romans in the movie spoke in Latin.

And the Hebrews in the movie spoke in Aramaic.

The universal language during the time of Jesus was Greek so the New Testament was penned in Greek.

And everyone in the world, the educated world, at the time of Christ's life was Greek.

They understood the language of Greek.

So when the authors of the New Testament wrote down the gospels and the epistles of the New Testament they wrote them in the language of Greek.

Now in God's province, we no longer of course, have any of the original text or documents of the old or the new testaments.

So, how can we know for sure then that we really have God's Word since we don't have the original copies?

Well, what we do have available are copies of those original documents, copies that were produced over a number of centuries.

And by comparing and analyzing all of those copies, through a process called textural criticism or textural analysis, we are able to determine what the original manuscripts said and where variations crept into the copies.

Now that process has confirmed that God has miraculously and remarkably preserved His Word for us.

So that the Bibles that we have in English are for the most part exactly what God has written down in the original copies.

Here is a famous statement called the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

It says "since God has no where promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textural criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission.

The verdict of this science however is that the Hebrew and Greek text appear to be amazingly well preserved.

So we are aptly justified in affirming a singular providence of God in this matter.

And declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error free.

Similarly no translation is or can be perfect and all translations are an additional step away from the autograph.

Yet the verdict of linguistic science is that English speaking Christians, at least, are exceedingly well served in these days with a host of excellent translations and have no cause for hesitating to conclude that the true Word of God is within their reach."

I.

THE PURPOSE OF GOD'S WORD: REVELATION

 

So while you can't handle the original documents of the Bible today, you can still have the confidence that most English Bibles faithfully represent the original documents of the Word of God.

And that God has supernaturally preserved and provided for us His Word as He gave it through the human authors generations ago.

Now with that in mind let's go to Hebrews 1:1-2 and look at the purpose of God's Word.

Why did God give us the bible?

Why did God give us the written Word?

Well, the purpose of it was to reveal Himself to us.

God wanted to reveal Himself to man.

Hebrews 1:1-2 "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe."

Now first of all notice God revealed Himself through diverse men.

It says in times past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets.

Now the prophets here are used in the generic sense.

He is not just talking about prophets who foretell the future.

But he is using prophets with the meaning intended being those who foretell the Word of God or those who forth tell the Word of God.

Not those who predict the future, but those who declare God's Word and God's revelation.

There is a difference.

He is not talking about the prophet like Nostradamus or prophetess like Jean Dixon; he is talking about those who speak the message of God.

In the Bible when the word prophet is used many times, most of the time it is not talking about someone who just predicts the future and future events, it is talking about somebody who declares the message of God and the truth of God.

A preacher for example that is what it is really talking about.

He is talking about someone who preaches or declares the revealed truth of God.

So he says these human writers declared the Word of God, the truth of God to our forefathers.

There were prophets such as Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel; we could name many others, Amos, Hosea and other Old Testament writers.

These men spoke the revelation of God as God gave it to them.

And then God used kings.

It says here that God revealed Himself through diverse men.

When you look at the writers of the Old Testament, they are not the same at all.

They are very diverse, from very diverse backgrounds.

Amos was a herdsman of sheep, but He also used Kings like David and Solomon, very powerful men.

Men who were poets and philosophers.

But he used others like Daniel, men who were men of great vision.

He also used priests.

Samuel was a priest of the Lord.

And He used Samuel to write the books of I & II Samuel.

Samuel recorded many of the acts of God and he gave us much of the revelation of God in the history of that time.

So God used many different writers in many different times to reveal His truth to our forefathers.

Moses gave us the first five books of the Bible known as the Pentateuch and then of course we have the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, then Ruth, then we have Samuel and the books of I & II Chronicles and I & II Kings and then we have books of poetry such as Job and Psalms and Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon and then we come on down and we have the prophetic books like Jeremiah, Daniel and others.

We have the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets and so God used many diverse men.

Secondly he said that God used many diverse ways.

God revealed Himself to our forefathers through diverse men and in diverse ways.

In verse 1 diverse ways means segments of time.

In diverse ways God revealed Himself not totally at one time but He revealed Himself progressively through the years of time.

It is an unfolding of God's revelation of Himself.

As you begin the Bible in the book of Genesis and as you continue through the Word of God, God is gradually, progressively revealing Himself and His plan for mankind.

And if you look at how He did this in segments, you would say that we have 39 specific portions or books in the Old Testament and 27 segments or portions in the New Testament making up 66 books of the Bible.

Of course we know that as far as the chapters go and the verses go, there were no chapters and there were no verses in the Bible in the original documents.

These were added by scribes later to help divide the Scripture and make it easier to read.

In many cases, they made it more difficult to read.

So your chapters and your verses are not inspired, but the books of the Bible or the segments and the portions that were inspired by different writers.

Within the portions there are various sections, there are paragraphs, there are phrases and those are very obvious to you as you read the Bible.

If you had no verses and you had no chapters, you could still analyze the Scripture and outline the Scripture and you would notice that there is different subject matter, that there is different parts that go together and that the subject matter changes as you go through the Word of God.

And then God revealed Himself with diverse methods, many times and in various ways.

When you read the Old Testament you will see that God sometimes used visions.

And then the men of God that He used to give us the Scripture wrote down the vision.

Daniel had many visions and God would show him His truth through visions.

Zechariah wrote visions.

His entire book is about visions that he had.

Amos had visions, mainly the prophets had visions and their books are about the visions that God gave them.

And these visions reveal the truth about God.

And then sometimes God used direct words that He placed within the heart of writers.

Sometimes God used parables and He gave them parables.

And the parables illustrated truth.

Sometimes God used symbols to illustrate a greater truth.

Now these were literal symbols but they illustrated even a greater truth.