Your Bible - 10-12-08

Insert – “Your Bible”, Very Important Doctrine!!

God has revealed Himself in two ways
1. General Revelation – Earth, Creation
2. Special Revelation – His Word!!

This is what we will be focusing on today, God’s Word. This is an important doctrine and if we understand it correctly, then this should help to shape the way our lives are lived.

So the Bible....
- Not in the Bible, haha
- Bible = From Phoenecia to Greek to Latin English
- Basically – So Holy Bible = Holy Book

Bible Facts
- 66 books
- 39 OT
- 27 NT
- Written in 3 languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek
- Written over the span of about 1500-1600 years or so
- About 40 different authors
a. People disagree on the authors on some of the books
- They were kings, herdsmen, soldiers, fisherman, poets, statesmen, scholars, priests and prophets.
- All of this accomplished with zero contradictions
- And is the number 1 best selling book of all time!! Praise God for that
a. Voltaire, philosopher, enlightenment writer, (1694-1778) “Within a century, the Bible will be extinct”
b. Good Commentary on people’s feelings about the Bible today
c. People think about the Bible as something to straighten out their coffee table

However, we believe something different about the Bible.

1. What does the Bible say about itself?
A. Jesus used the OT to train, correct, rebuke, teach and defend Himself
- He also refers to the OT as scripture
- Scripture – Graphe = Holy Writings
- Matthew 22:29 Arguing with the Sadducees
- Interesting that He would attest the Scriptures with the power of God
- John 7:38 – Salvation
- So Jesus used the OT as His authority when training, correcting, rebuking, teaching and defending. And He used copies. He didn’t use the originals, rather copies. Make that straight in your mind now, we come back to it.
- Shows how our OT and how reliable it is that Jesus would quote form it

B. Peter uses Paul’s writings and others as a witness to Scripture – Holy Writings
- 2 Peter 3:15-16
- What does this tell us?
- Paul’s writings are hard to understand!!
- Shows that the authors knew, what they were writing. Helps us to see that as soon as these letters were written they were Scripture. It didn’t take a council to say they were scripture, but rather they automatically were.

C. The Scriptures are inspired by God
- 2 Timothy 3:16-17
- Because of the inspiration by God.
- I want to camp for a little while and fully take on what this passage means

All Scripture is inspired by God
- We already looked at what Scripture meant
- Same thing here, referring to Holy Writings
- Inspired – Theopneustos – Literally means God out-breathed the word to the human authors
- Not meaning that God’s word is inspiring – even though it is, Rather scripture is a divine product of what God has spoken out
- What did this look like?
a. Dictation? No
b. 1) We see authors’ different writing personalities, vocabularies, literary styles, and conscious desires imbedded in the Word’s of God
c. 2) 2 Peter 1:20-21
d. God moved men to write what He wanted.

That is why we (Pastor Jay, elders, doctrinal statement of the church, myself) believe in the Verbal Plenary Inspiration of the scriptures.
- Basically what that big title means, we believe that every word in our Bible is inspired by God, Inerrant – No mistakes and has all authority for our lives.
- John 11:35 – “Jesus Wept”
- Shortest Verse, yet it tells a lot!!
i. Emotion
ii. Human
iii. Incarnation

- Helps to show every word is inspired b/c why else would this be added?
- We ascribe this to the originals, the very letters and books that the human authors wrote.

Profitable for teaching, reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work.

Teaching – If we are not teaching from the Bible, than we are wrong
Reproof – Not only showing sinfulness, but to show discipline
Correction – Show is someone is in error
Training in righteousness – Training in our lives, our lives are a race and we need to train for one

2. How can we be sure that the Bible we have today is God’s Word? Or Accurate?

A. Copies of Manuscripts
- Where we got our Bible from
- Common misconception is that the Bible started off in one language and played the telephone game. NOT True
- Copies were always made from the original language.
- Refer to Chart


****For Chart shown in Church go to:

http://www.carm.org/questions/rewritten.htm


- We can trust what we have is accurate





B. Personal Experience
Hebrews 4:12-13
- Most of you sitting here can attest to awesome power that Scripture has in your life. Maybe in Salvation story
Maybe in Overcoming a sin
Maybe in Sharing Christ with someone
- Scripture changing me
- Others can’t tell you, that this has hasn’t happened in your life!

C. Prophecy
- This is something that helped me to see that Jesus was real and believe what He said not only about Himself but about us as fallen sinners

a. Isaiah 7:14 – Virgin Birth and His name will be Immanuel
- Fulfilled in Matthew 1:18-25.
- Born of a Virgin and “God with us” – God Incarnate


b. Micah 5:2 – Born in Bethlehem
- Fulfilled in Matt 2:1


c. Psalm 16:10 – Would rise from the dead
- Fulfilled in Christ’s Resurrection
- Referred to by Peter in Acts 2:31

- Jesus Fulfilled more than 300 prophecies in His lifetime
- Consider This
- The odds of fulfilling 8 prophecies by one man, would be liken to these odds
- Build a fence around Texas
- Fill it 2ft deep with silver dollars
- Paint 1 red
- Mix em up
- Starting anywhere, blindfolded, stop anywhere and pick up the coin and have that be the red one.
- Jesus did not fulfill Prophecy by ACCIDENT

So What? I’ve given you a bunch of information and so what do we do with it?

Non-Christian
- Seek out this Jesus we have been talking about
- He is real and He wants to be in a relationship with you
- I just proved how the Bible, which attests to Jesus is real, Search Him out!!
- The Bible tells us that when we believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sin, He took that death for us, He was our substitution. And He was raised three days later
- Bible says believe that Jesus did that for you and you are saved

Christian
- Realize what the Bible is saying about our lives
- Struggling with sin, the Bible says take drastic measures to get it out of your life
- Know that the Bible has authority in our lives and let it have that authority, not because it is a book that the church likes to talk about, but Because it is God’s WORD
- “Within the covers of one single book, the Bible, are all the answers to all the problems that face us today--if only we would read and believe.” – Ronald Regan



Resources:

Who Made God?
By Ravi Zacharias and Norman Geisler


Basic Theology
By Charles Ryrie


Ryrie Study Bible
By Charles Ryrie


One Heartbeat Away
By Mark Cahill


Carm.org

Thanks!
God Bless
Steve