Scripture's Authority

Last time we looked at the Belgic Confession, we considered general revelation—creation. We looked at Romans 1 and Psalm 19. In Psalm 19, we observed how all of creation declares God’s glory, so that in the end, no one will be excused by saying, “I just didn’t know there was a God.” The evidence of God, the mark of the creator is all over creation.

And yet, Romans 1, teaches us that people love darkness more than light, that they suppress and ignore the reality of God, exchanging the truth for a lie and so God has given them over to every kind of evil expression.

But we also recognised that God didn’t simply give us a general revelation concerning Himself, but He also gave us a book that teaches us all about him, about us, and the reason why we’re here.

This evening, we’re going to look at God’s special revelation to us, the Bible.

1. The Bible

Now, Guido de Bres, in writing the Belgic Confession, was dealing with something a wee bit different from what we deal with. It wasn’t so much that the church and the people of his day denied the Bible, but rather that they didn’t emphasise it enough. First of all, there weren’t many Bibles around, the average person didn’t own one because they were very expensive, and the Roman Catholic Church denied the lay person from owning one.

Second, the Roman Catholic Church placed the church tradition, and the pope’s writing and teachings on par with the Bible. The Bible wasn’t the sole source of authority for the church. The reformers, Luther, Calvin and de Bres, all believed that scripture alone has authority. This is still a major difference between protestant churches and the Roman Catholic church. The Roman Catholic Church still believes that the pope is the vicar of Christ, Christ’s physical representative on earth, blessed especially with infallibility to proclaim, as it were, God’s word from Rome.

So, into that situation, the Belgic Confession speaks. Guido De Bres, following the Reformers before him, states how unique, amazing, and special the Bible is. It is the very Word of God. The God who created everything, the almighty, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal God, communicates clearly through His Word.

And even though God communicates clearly, His message isn’t always well received.

2. Reception

Now, if you compare the reception of the Bible to the reception of ancient documents, something strange happens. People have no problem receiving as true, as real, as acceptable, the writings of Plato, even though we don’t have any autographs of his work, in fact, we don’t even have any copies of his work in the original language he wrote them in, we only have translations!

Contrast that with the scriptures. People question the validity, the truth of the Scriptures. They ask, “Is this what Paul really meant to write? Haven’t there been changes to the texts over time? How do we know that this is what God really meant?

What we discover is that people are reluctant to receive the Bible, for the same reason they’re reluctant, even militant against receiving general revelation. Let’s face it, if they refuse to see God in creation, they’re going to fight hard against seeing him in the Scriptures.

But, those who receive the Bible as true, know what Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote in 1 Timothy: “All Scripture is give by inspiration of God. It is profitable. Those who receive God’s Word as true, profit from it. For it is profitable for doctrine—teaching about all things—God, humanity, sin, salvation, eternity. It is useful for correcting belief and behaviour. It calls people out in their sin. And it instructs people in how to live as God created us to live—in obedience to Him.

The Bible accurately describes physical places. If you go to the Elah Valley where David fought Goliath, you can see the land as it is described in 1 Samuel 17:2.Standing there, it is easy to picture the army encampments, the stream flowing between them.

Actually, during the six day war, when Israel was defending itself from the attacking Arab nations, the armed forces commander, used the same tactics found in the Bible to sneak through the land to avoid attacks, and to surprise their enemies, just as King David did—how was that possible? Because the land today is pretty much the same as the land was back then!

The Bible is unabashedly historical. It is constantly grounded in history, recording specific historical moments. You can look to other accounts, written by other nations, and find a correlative story. So, there are records among the Babylonian writings that mesh with the Biblical account of the rise and fall of Babylon. Also, archaeological evidence continues to correspond to the events, places, and persons in the Bible.

The Bible attests to itself in that it was given by God, through men. 2 Peter 1:21 “for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” It was the Holy Spirit who inspired, that is breathed out, the Word of God into the minds of godly men. To those whom the Holy Spirit has given life, the Word of God speaks life.

Article 5 can be highlighted with three 3 c’s: Canon, Conscience and Clarity.

Canon

Canon, that’s canon with one n, not two, as in the weapon of war. Though the canon of scripture is more powerful than any weapon of war, whether ancient or modern.

Canon comes from the Greek word kanon meaning rule or measure. It was a term that referred to a stick used to mark something accurately. It was the standard. If you tried to build something without a canon, your building would have no reference point, you’d have no accuracy, and the whole project would be in danger.

The scriptures function as a canon for Christian living. The scriptures are the measure or rule for the Christian faith, as we see in the first section of article 5. The Bible is more than mere literature. This is more than a novel, an historical account, a collection of interesting thoughts and helpful hints to get through life.

No, it is the basis for regulating, founding and establishing our faith. It is a description of how true life ought to be!

Is the Bible important? Yes! It is the foundation, the go-to source, the most important document for Christian faith. We believe the Bible to be accurate—it has been proven accurate through archaeology. We believe the Bible is true—it gives a very good and reasonable explanation for the state of the world we live in, why there is something instead of nothing, why evil is in the world, why we have knowledge of good and evil, why we have morality and why we long to worship something. Granted there are other spiritual writings, and even secular writings which speak to each of those things I just mentioned, but the Bible gives us the most reasonable, most logical explanation for everything.

One might ask, “how were the books of the Bible selected? How did the church come up with this canon, this rule?”

Protestants have come up with four criteria for why certain books and not others were selected as the Old and New Testament books. The four criteria is as follows: First: Apostolic Origin—For the New Testament books, they had to be written by or based upon the preaching and teaching of the apostles or their companions. Thus, while the gospels of Matthew and John were written by apostles, Mark was a companion of Peter and Luke was a companion of Paul. All the NT books can be traced to close apostolic origin.

Second: Universal Acceptance—all the major Christian communities in the first four centuries accepted all the books that make up the current canon. Sure, some of them had more. In fact, it was a process, started quite early, a canon similar to ours was produced by Origin around 120 AD. Usually, it was a matter of having several texts to choose from, and selecting the best. The same criteria were used by the Jews to establish the Hebrew canon, our Old Testament.

Third: Liturgical use—When Christians gathered for their weekly worship services, they read from the Old Testament, as well as the letters and later, the gospels. There quickly arose certain ones that were widely accepted among many communities in many areas of the world.

Fourth: Consistent Message—the chosen books all contain a similar theology. All the books, both Old and New Testament are remarkable that though they were written by more than 40 authors, they all contain a single, recognisable story woven throughout.

This might lead some to ask what makes the Bible authoritative. Okay, so those are nice points, but what makes these books of the Bible count? What made the compilers say, these are the ones? Conscience

Conscience

The Bible describes the scriptures as a double edged sword. There’s something hard hitting about the Bible. Jeremiah describes a contrast between what is falsely written and the true words of God. God Himself breathed into His word, that it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

Jeremiah goes on to say the Lord describes His word as a fire, a hammer that breaks rocks into pieces. Indeed, the Bible is like that. It pounds into our hearts of stone, and turns them into hearts of flesh.

How does it do this? It convicts us of sin. It confronts us as with a mirror, showing us our true selves. Either we look at the mirror and truly see what’s there, and make changes based on that reality, or we run and hide from it, contenting ourselves in believing the delusion we’ve created.

This demonstrates that the scriptures themselves have authority. It is not as though the compilers of the canon took all the letters of that were written, all the books, including those that are not currently included in the canon, and threw them down a flight of steps. Selecting those that went the farthest down were selected as being weightier. Although I did have a professor say that’s how he assigned grades. The papers that went farther got the highest grades.

No, the compilers immediately recognised the authority inherent in the scriptures. Go online, read the Gospel according to Judas. Compare it to the true Gospels. You can see it, just by reading it, that it lacks the authority that the Gospels have. You can do the same for the books of the apocrypha. Many of these are books written during the inter-testamental period. They can be useful, they can help us understand the Old and New Testaments better, but in the end they lack the necessary authority.

But the best way to see why the scriptures are authoritative is to look how Jesus used them. Jesus quoted the Old Testament to the devil. Faced by temptations that were common to humans, Jesus used the Old Testament to turn from temptation.

Jesus used the Old Testament to testify to himself. When selected to read the scroll in the synagogue, Jesus read from Isaiah, “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord’ and “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-19, 21b ).

And that nicely leads to our third point, clarity.

Clarity

The clarity of scripture, it’s truth, it’s accuracy, the reasonableness of it is clear, even to the blind.

Jesus Himself said that He came to give sight to the blind, Jesus healed the blind, even one who was born blind! If He gives sight to the physically blind; He also gives sight to the spiritually blind.

Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, allows people to see the truth in scripture. A person has to be given this sight in order to believe. Apart from Christ’s work, no manner of reasonable explanation will convince any.

The truth is in here. Pray that God will open our eyes to see His truth. Pray that God will help us to understand His Word. Pray that His word would not return empty. Amen.