Obviously, this ministry is totally dependent upon the word of the living God, the Scripture, the Bible.  We are committed to the Word of God as absolutely true, and we are committed to every phrase, and every verse, and every chapter, and every book as having come from God Himself.  The only way we can know God and His will is to have it given to us in a way that is unmistakable, and God has chosen to do that in a book, the Bible.  The other night I had the opportunity again to be on CNN, and to be in another one of those discussions with people who did not agree with me.  It seems to be my lot in life, and they are usually exceedingly disagreeable.  And whenever I am in that kind of environment with unbelievers, other religious leaders, people with other moral viewpoints, I really only have two things to say, and whatever the conversation is in one way is immaterial to me. 

The subject doesn’t matter a lot to me.  I’m just looking for ways to say two things.  One of them is that Jesus is the only Savior, and the other one is that the Bible is the only authority from God.  And I want to say those in whatever way I can, calling people to the single authority of the Word of God as over against all human opinion, and to the only Savior as Jesus Christ as over against all human religion.  And the other night one of the other guests, who was a homosexual advocate and a self-confessed Roman Catholic, said that I was so caught up in the words of the Bible that I missed the entire message.  Now, that is a strange way of thinking; so caught up in the words of the Bible that I have missed its entire message. 

How else could anyone know the message of the Bible apart from the words of the Bible?  It is that kind of mystical nonsense that has captivated the hearts of millions of people, who think somehow there is a subliminal message of love that transcends what the Bible actually says.  God gave us a book, and in that book He spoke, and what He said is exactly what He wanted to say and He desired to say it in a way that we would understand it, because we are accountable for it.  God has spoken, and He has not mumbled, and He has spoken clearly, and He has spoken precisely, and exactly, and directly to the matters that concern Him and concern us.  And God has sworn in His revelation, the holy Bible, that He has spoken the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 

This is true, it is all true, and nothing in it is untrue.  It is also all the truth that God desired to reveal to us.  The rest is left for us to know in eternity.  And the Bible alone is the true word of the one true God, who does not contradict Himself, who does not write other books that say other things that are contrary to what He has said in this book.  There is only one God, and He has spoken in one book.  All other supposed revelations from God are not at all from God; they are the concoctions of men, and for the most part, demon-inspired men.  From the Koran, for example, the Bhagavad-Gita, the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, Patterson Glover Frye, Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, to all the false prophets, all the seers, all the cultists, all the religious gurus, all the religious leaders, all the world religions – it is all deception.

It is all fabrication, both human and demonic.  It is all wrong.  God has spoken, and He has spoken in one book, and that book is the Bible.  Now, that simplifies the issue.  It is not complicated to sort out the matter of religion.  Most people think it is complicated to sort out the matter of religion because there are so many competing religions, and the idea today is to be tolerant of all of them, and to allow everyone to embrace their own religion, feeling that it’s all ending up in the same heaven of heavens, no matter how you approach it.  But the Bible claims just the opposite; that anything that contradicts the Bible, anything that is a competing source of revelation to the Bible, is not from God.  If it is not contained in the 66 books of the Bible, it is not the word of God.  If it’s not in the 66 books of the Bible, God didn’t say it. 

For all generations through human history, what God has said He has put in this book – one book made up of two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament, 66 specific books given to just over 40 writers over a period of about 1500 years.  The Holy Spirit authored it all, put it all together in what we know as the Bible, and it is established as the sole divine authority on God’s Word.  This is why it is the singular duty of man to respond obediently to this one book.  It is the response to this one book and what this book says that God requires that determines everyone’s eternal destiny, and nothing else determines it – nothing else.  What a person does with the Bible determines heaven or hell.

Years ago – many years ago now – Protestant denominations eliminated heresy.  You might think that was quite an achievement.  Protestant denominations eliminated heresy.  But the strange twist is that the way they eliminated heresy was not by crushing it with the truth, not by overpowering it with the Word of God, but rather they eliminated the idea of heresy when they eliminated the idea of absolute truth.  If there is no such thing as absolute truth, then there can be no such thing as heresy.  If there is no fixed truth, then there can be no discernable error.  If everything is up for grabs, and the words of the Bible don’t matter, or are only suggestions, or are at best equal to other religious books, and you can believe whatever you want, then there is no such thing as fixed truth, and therefore there can be no such thing as fixed heresy. 

So they eradicated heresy by eradicating the idea of truth at the same time.  And now there is a comfort among old-line liberal Protestant denominations with anything and everything.  That is why a few weeks ago when I was preaching in Calvin’s great cathedral in the city of Geneva, it was a big event.  The cathedral was packed from front to back and side to side, and I opened the Word of God in that cathedral for the first time, we think, in 30 years, to give a message that truly represented the Word of God.  And the last formidable event in that cathedral, which is a confessed Protestant Christian cathedral, was Buddhist – it was Buddhist.  That worked, in a way, for us because they said, when asked if I could come and preach, “I suppose if we had a service for Buddhists, we could have a service for a Bible.”  And so I guess, in a way, the Buddhists prepared the way.

But the point is how can a church that is a confessed Christian Protestant church embrace Buddhism?  That church is also the mother church that brought into existence The World Council of Churches, the most ecumenical body on the planet.  They were happy to declassify heresy; it was easy.  All they had to do was eliminate absolute truth.  And in our day, I’m afraid the movement is spreading.  There is a new kind of inclusivism even in evangelicalism, a new kind of inclusivism that threatens to eradicate truth, and therefore eradicate any classification of error, and blur everything.  And the only hope, of course, in the midst of all of this, is to go back to the Word of God.  And all this sinful rebellion doesn’t change or alter what the Scripture is. 

Whether it’s attacked by rationalism, or whether it’s attacked by liberalism, or whether it’s attacked by what is called neo-orthodoxy, or whether it is attacked by pluralism, or mysticism, or inclusivism, or political correctness, or tolerance, or any other assault, it changes nothing about the nature of this book.  It was Jesus who said, “Not one jot or tittle would in any wise pass from this book until all is fulfilled.”  It is an eternal book.  It is an unchanging book.  It is the anvil in the old story of the man pounding the hammers, the blacksmith, and after many years the anvil stood, but many hammers had been destroyed.  The hammers that have hit the Scripture lie in the rubble; the Scripture still stands. 

The Bible still is the truth of God, the only truth of God and nothing but the truth of God.  Now, how do we know this to be true?  We as Christians know this to be true because the Spirit of God has enlightened us, and we talked about that in our last couple of studies, and a couple of my very favorite studies we’ve ever done.  You can get them on tape.  Who can believe the Bible?  It is true that the Bible is exactly what it claims to be.  We know that to be true, we know that to be true because the Spirit of God has convinced us of it by a supernatural work of awakening our understanding.  But what we now understand is that the Bible is true, and as we look at the Word of God, we find that that conviction is supported by what the Bible claims.

So what I want to do tonight is give you a look at internal biblical support to the Scripture’s inspiration.  I’m not calling into question whether you believe it’s inspired.  If you’re a Christian, you do.  The Spirit of God has granted you the gift of confidence in the Word.  You understand that.  But I want you to see how important it is to have the internal evidence of the Scripture to bolster that heart conviction that the Spirit of God has granted to you.  If you were to set out to prove that the Bible was true, how would you do it?  You could – well, you could approach it a lot of ways.  You could say this, you could say, “Well, human experience is a good verifier of the truth of the Bible.” 

If you do what the Bible tells you to do, you will experience the result.  If you confess your sin, and if you put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be regenerated.  Your life will be transformed.  God will change what you love, and who you love, and how you love, and you will see a dramatic alteration in your life.  Biblical experience verifies the veracity of Scripture.  And it does.  But – but there are other people reading other holy books that are having other kinds of experiences, and experience isn’t always and never should be the final authority, because experience can be falsified.  Drunk people have been known to see pink elephants when there are none, for example.

Somebody else might say, “Well we could verify the Bible by science.”  Whereas other books made ridiculous outlandish, outrageous statements about the world, the physical world, the Bible makes very, very scientifically accurate statements about the physical creation, even when it was written before modern science discovered these things to be true.  The Bible says the earth turns on an axis.  The Bible says that the sun drags the solar system, our solar system from one end of space to the other.  The Bible says that there is a water system, a hydrological system that works in an incredible cycle.  The Bible describes it.  I read you a passage this morning that talks about the weight of the mountains.  This is called isostasy, the whole world is balanced. 

If you have, for example, a basketball that is out of balance and you roll it, it would go like this, like this, like this.  If the world were doing that, we would be jumping, and jumping, and popping up at intervals.  It turns perfectly, because it’s perfectly balanced.  That’s the science of isostasy, and it is God, as we read this morning, who weighs the hills in His balance.  We could go to science, we can look at science and say the Bible is amazingly scientific.  To show you how amazing it is, in 1903 a man died by the name of Herbert Spencer.  Herbert Spencer was a scientist.  He was heralded by the world; he was given all kinds of prizes as a ground-breaking scientist. 

His greatest achievement was categorical.  It was Herbert Spencer who announced to the scientific world that everything that exists in the universe falls into five categories – one of five: time, force, action, space, and matter.  That’s what he said, and he said it in that order: time, force, action, space, and matter.  Nice going, Herbert.  How about this?  “In the beginning,” that’s time, “God,” that’s force, “created” that’s action, “the heavens,” that’s space, “and the earth,” that’s matter.  Right there in the first verse.  It’s all right, Herbert, you were trying to find it without that verse.  We could go to science, and we could say that science verifies the Bible but while we would get a general affirmation – a little better than experience, we’d get a general affirmation, that’s pretty amazing stuff, somebody could easily rise up and say, “Well, that doesn’t really mean that everything in there is true.” 

Somebody else might come along and say, “Well we could look at – we could look at prophecy.  There are prophecies in the Bible that did come to pass.”  And we could say, “Well, at least the scientific parts of the Bible are true, and at least the experiential parts of the Bible are true.”  And certainly when God said certain nations were going to fall and they fell, and when God said He was going to drown the world and He drowned the world, those things came true, so there are certain prophecies that did come to pass.  And that means that somebody who wrote the Bible knows something more than we know, because He understood physical science before anybody did.  He understood events before they even happened, so as to be able to predict them. 

We could look at those kinds of things and they can support our understanding of Scripture.  You could look at archeology.  You can traverse the ruins, the tells of the Middle East, and you can go into the museums there and you can find things from the Rosetta Stone on, and caves in Egypt with certain drawings on them that indicate that Hebrews came there.  You can find in the Code of Hammurabi a code of law that even predates Moses, which indicates that men were from the beginning under law, and they weren’t free-wheeling apes swinging from trees.  You can find a lot of archeological evidence and support for things that the Bible says came to pass.  You can even find the crumbled walls of Jericho, in a strange configuration which fits perfectly the idea that they fell outward, flat. 

So you can look at that, and you could say, “Well, at least those parts of the Bible are absolutely true, because archeology verifies them.”  We have never found anything in the Bible that is scientifically incorrect – never found anything in the Bible that is historically incorrect.  Science verifies everything it says.  You say, “What about the day when they said the sun stood still?”  Well, obviously the sun didn’t stand still; the earth stopped revolving.  But from the perception of the person standing here, the sun stopped.  That’s perception.  When you got up this morning, you didn’t look out your window and say, “Oh, what a lovely earth-revolving.”  That was an earth-revolving.

The sun did not move in the direction you thought it moved.  The earth moved.  But from our perception, you say it’s a sunrise, you say it’s a sunset.  So there are those kinds of things in the Bible but nothing in the Bible contradicts science, and nothing in the Bible contradicts history, and nothing in the Bible contradicts a promise that God gave, as if it didn’t come true the way He said it would come true.  And we’re going to look at some of that in this little series we’re going to do.  But before we look at any of those things as supporting evidences, it all begins by listening to what the Bible claims.  Now, this is remarkable.  Let me just give you two words to think about: infallible and inerrant. 

Infallible – and I like to use that word, maybe just in a personal way.  You could argue a lot about what it could mean; it’s got a little flexibility in it, as does the word inerrant.  But let’s use the word infallible to say that God has so inspired Scripture that it is the sure, safe, reliable, eternally true rule and guide in all matters, in total.  Let’s use infallible to speak of the totality of scripture.  It is the whole truth.  We’re looking at it from the bird’s eye view, the big picture.  It is an infallible document.  That is, what it affirms in full is true.  Psalm 19:7, “The law of the Lord is perfect.”  Psalm 18:30, “As for God, His way is perfect,” or “blameless.  The word of the Lord is tried,” or “tested,” “proven.” 

Psalm 119, “Thy word is very pure.”  “Thy law is truth.”  “All Thy commandments are truth.”  “The sum of Thy word is truth.”  “Every one of Thy righteous ordinances endures forever, for all Thy commandments are righteous.”  Psalm 111:7, “All His precepts are sure.”  Romans 7:12, “God’s word is holy, righteous and good.”  And you have in Deuteronomy 4:2, Do not add to Scripture.  You have in Revelation 22:18 and 19, Do not add to Scripture, do not take away from Scripture.  It is, in total, complete and infallible.  In John 10:35, these words are given, and they are significant – if brief and to the point – and as always, the Lord’s economy of words is stunning. 

In the tenth chapter of John’s gospel, verse 35, Jesus says at the end of the verse, “The Scripture cannot be broken – The Scripture cannot be broken.”  It is like a chain; all the verses are linked, all the chapters are linked, all the 66 books are linked, the testaments are linked, and there is nowhere where it can be broken.  There is no place where the chain could be broken.  It is in toto the truth of God, true in total.  That is what it claims, that is what it demands from us, as to confidence and trust.

The second word is inerrant – inerrant – and that looks at it from the worm’s eye view; not looking at the total, but looking at every word.  Every word is true.  Every word in the original autographs as inspired by God is free from error, falsehood, mistake, inaccuracy.  So the total truth of the message of the Word is safeguarded by every word being a true word from God.  The Bible is entirely true, because it is true in every part.  It is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Proverbs 30, verses 5 and 6 – and we’re giving you the confession of God in His own word as to His word.  Proverbs 30, verses 5 and 6, “Every word of God is pure – every word.”  Psalm 12:6, “The words of the Lord are pure words as silver tested in a furnace refined seven times.”  And the psalmist is looking for some kind of an analogy to express the purity of the Word.  In Psalm 119:140, the psalmist says, “Thy word is very pure.”  So whether you’re talking about infallibility, the big picture, or whether you’re talking about inerrancy of the small picture, the combination of the two speaks of the Bible’s truthfulness.  It is true. 

And now I’m going to say some things to you and give you some scriptures.  You might not want to try and look them up but just listen.  In Isaiah 65:16, the Lord calls Himself the God of truth.  That’s where it all starts.  He is the God of truth.  Jeremiah 10:10, the prophet writes of the God who is the true God.  The New Testament agrees with the Old, calling God a God of truth.  John 3:33 says, “God is truthful.”  John 17:3, Jesus said, “That they may know You, the only true God.”  1 John 5:20, “He is the true God.”  Three times the Scripture says God cannot lie: Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2; and Hebrews 6:18.  God cannot lie.  It is impossible.  The Bible is, therefore, infallible and inerrant, because it is written by God who is truth, speaks only truth, cannot speak anything but truth.

The writers of the Old Testament make literally thousands of claims to the truthfulness of what they wrote.  Over two thousand times they claim to be speaking the very words of God.  That’s just the Old Testament writers.  Again and again they use phrases like, “The Spirit of the Lord has spoken to me,” or, “The word of God came to me.”  Isaiah, for example, says in Isaiah 1:2, “Hear, O heavens, listen, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.”  And then he unfolds the great revelation that is the book of Isaiah.  When God speaks, everybody listens, because He’s God.  In the New Testament we find more of the same, focused particularly in the teaching of Jesus. 

Jesus says in Matthew 5, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.”  The law and the prophets is a term used to describe the Old Testament.  “I haven’t come to change anything.  I have come to fulfill the Old Testament.”  “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen,” to spread out the meaning of jot and tittle, “will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is fulfilled.”  Jesus said even the little, tiny marks has the authority of God behind it.  That’s why James said this in James 2:10, “Whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking it all.” 

If you just violate one small part of the Word of God, it’s as if you have violated it all, because it is all true, it is all divinely demanded.  The Old Testament writers refer, either specifically or generally, to what they’re writing as the very words of God about 4,000 times – about 4,000 times.  Two thousand times, I told you a moment ago, they make direct claims that the Lord spoke to them, but at least 4,000 times, they affirm that what they are writing is the Word of God.  The writers in the New Testament quote the Old Testament as the Word of God about 320 times, and make reference to the Old Testament at least a thousand times, so the writers of the New Testament affirm the infallibility and inerrancy of the Old.  And New Testament writers also claim inspiration for the New Testament. 

Now, I want you to follow me a little bit with this, because I think this is really very wonderful.  Galatians 1 – Galatians 1, here is the Apostle Paul – this is just kind of a general entry point here – Galatians, chapter 1, and verse 11, Paul says, “I will have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.  I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”  Here is Paul affirming that the message of the gospel came from God.  Down in verse 15, when God had set him apart, even from his mother’s womb and called him through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in him, he says, “That I might preach Him among the Gentiles, and I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood.”  He received his message and his mission directly from God.

Now, I know this is unique to him as an apostle, but this is a kind of model of how God spoke to the prophets in the Old Testament and the other writers of the Old Testament directly.  So He speaks to Paul, who is one of the apostles, and one of the writers of the New Testament.  If you would look at Romans, chapter 4, you see how this – well, look at Galatians, chapter 4, first of all – just thought of that one – Galatians, chapter 4, for just a moment.  Here is Paul quoting Genesis – this is Paul quoting Genesis.  And what does he say?  Verse 30 – writing his letter to the Galatians: “What does the Scripture say?  Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.”  And that’s taken out of Genesis, chapter 21, a couple of verses there, verses 10 and 12; Paul quotes the Old Testament, calls it Scripture.

Now, if you look at Romans, chapter 4, you find another of these kinds of references at the very beginning; verse 3 of this chapter, Romans 4:3, “What does the Scripture say?” says Paul.  “And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”  And now he’s quoting Genesis 15:6.  He is quoting from the book of Genesis as Scripture.  He knows that it is authored by God.  He knows that Jesus has said the Scripture cannot be broken.  And it is affirmed that the Old Testament is Scripture by the inspired writer in the New Testament, namely the apostle Paul.  Let me take you a little bit further along this path; 1 Timothy, chapter 5 – 1 Timothy, chapter 5. 

In this particular chapter, you have tucked into verse 18 two quotes – two quotes.  And this is a very interesting comparison to make.  The first quote, verse 18: “The Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.’”  Now, the Scripture does say that.  It is in Deuteronomy 25, verse 4.  The simple meaning is, “Feed your animal.”  But the analogy of it is, the application of it is that you take care of the people who serve you.  It’s a kind of proverbial statement.  If you want the ox to do his work, you feed him.  And if you expect people to do what you want them to do, you take care of them.  It’s that kind of idea.  But he says the Scripture says it, and quotes Deuteronomy 25:4.

“And” – and here’s the important one, verse 18 – “and the Scripture also says ‘the laborer is worthy of his wages.’”  Where is that in the Scripture?  Where is that in the Old Testament?  That is not in the Old Testament; as a matter of fact, it is in Luke, chapter 10, and verse 7, where Jesus said this: “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”  So what Moses wrote in Deuteronomy is the Scripture, and what Luke wrote in his gospel is also the Scripture.  Here you have the testimony, then, of a New Testament writer to both the Old Testament as the Scripture and the New Testament as the Scripture.  Paul calls Luke’s writing Scripture.

Now let’s look at 2 Peter, chapter 3 – 2 Peter, chapter 3, and verse 15.  This is an interesting two verses, verses 15 and 16.  Now, the reference here is to “our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you.”  He wrote about the patience of our Lord leading to salvation, as the beginning of verse 15 says.  Then Peter refers to “our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, he wrote to you, as also in all his letters.”  So now he’s gone from a particular letter written to a particular group, to all the Pauline letters; that’s 13 epistles.  “Also in all his letters, speaking of them in these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of” – what – “the Scriptures.” 

So what is Peter saying about Paul’s letters?  They’re a part of Scripture, just like the rest of Scripture.  Here again, as Paul called Luke’s writing Scripture, this is the leading writer of the epistles verifying a writer of the gospels.  So Peter calls Paul’s writing Scripture.  In fact, all his letters are Scripture.  Turn to Jude, chapter 17, and we’ll follow this path.  Jude, verse 17 – only one chapter, verse 17, “But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, ‘In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.’”  And just exactly where does this come from?  Second Peter 3:3: “Remember the words spoken and written by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and he quotes Peter.  So Jude affirms Peter.  Peter affirms Paul.  Paul affirms the gospel writers.

The text of Scripture doesn’t beg this issue.  It doesn’t put a lot of fanfare around it.  It’s just magnificently, almost quietly there, because it’s such an obvious reality.  It doesn’t need to be blown up, as if we had to prove a point.  In the book of Revelation, there is blessing, in chapter 1, verse 3, pronounced on one who reads and hears the words of the prophecy and heeds the things which are written in it.  “And this is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bondservants, the things which must shortly take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bondservant John.”  Here we know now that the book of Revelation is inspired by God.  It’s inspired by God.  God is the author of it, and He gave it to John through angelic mediators, in this case. 

In the 19th chapter of Revelation, in the 9th verse, John is given instruction from a voice out of the throne of God.  “And he said to me, ‘Write – write this, “Blessed are those who are invited to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.”’  And he said to me, ‘These are the’” – what – “‘true words of God.’”  Chapter 21 of Revelation, verse 5, we get a vision of the new heaven and the new earth: “And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’  And He said, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true.’”  Chapter 22, verse 6, “And he said to me, ‘These words are faithful and true.’  And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets sent His angel to show to His bondservants the things which must shortly take place.”  So all the way from the Pentateuch, all the way from the New Testament writer quoting the book of Genesis as Scripture to the Revelation being the true Word of God, the sweeping reality of the testimony internally of the writers of Scripture is that they were writing the Word of God unmistakably.  This is unmistakable powerful testimony internally to the Scripture being the Word of God.

But there’s one other testimony that I want to take the time to talk about tonight; and a lot more to be said, but always for another time.  I want to talk about the testimony of Jesus.  It matters to me what Jesus’ view of Scripture was, how about you?  I think so.  Jesus is the one who said in John 10:35, “Scripture can’t be broken.”  Jesus is the one who said in Matthew 5:17 and 18, “Not one jot or tittle will in any way be removed from this law.”  Now in Matthew 26:24, He looked at His cross, and He said this, “The Son of Man goes, as it has been written concerning Him.”  A few verses later He told Peter that He didn’t need the protection of Peter’s sword, for if He wished to, He could call down angels from heaven to assist.  But then He said this, Matthew 26:54: “How then will the scriptures be fulfilled?”

In other words, Jesus came to fulfill the law.  He also came to fulfill the scriptures that prophesied of His death and His resurrection.  It really is a staggering statement that He said, “Scripture cannot be broken.”  He meant that what God said was true, and it would take place.  He said in Luke 16:17, “It would be easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the Law to fail.”  In Luke 18:31, “All things that are written by the prophets shall be accomplished.”  So what was Jesus’ view of Scripture?  It was that it was the word of God, that it was a true reflection of a true God, of a God who could not lie but could only speak the truth.  And Jesus even called attention to specific words. 

Illustration, Psalm 22:1 – and there are many of these.  Psalm 22:1 predicted that when the Messiah died on the cross, He would say this, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”  While dying on the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”  Matthew 27:46.  Jesus believed in the fulfillment of every word of the Old Testament.  He corroborated the great truths of the Old Testament as well.  He confirmed the creation of Adam and Eve.  He confirmed that it was a real creation, and they were real persons.  He said this, Matthew 19:4 and 5: “Have you not read that He made them at the beginning and made them male and female?”  He made them, He made them at the beginning, and He made them male and female.  And He said, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.”  Jesus believed in the creation account as recorded in Genesis, and He substantiated it.

Jesus also said repeatedly that the problems that people were having in not knowing God was because they didn’t know the Scripture.  “Search the Scripture; they are they which speak of Me.”  “Has not Scripture said,” He repeated again and again and again.  So you have a choice.  To sum up the testimony of Jesus, I’ll give you a little set of options.  One of these three must be true.  The first is that there are no errors in the Old Testament, because that’s what Jesus taught, that the Scripture couldn’t be broken.  The second option is there are errors, but Jesus didn’t know about them.  Third possibility is there are errors, and He knew about them and tried to cover them up.

So what option do you have?  That Jesus was a charlatan and a fraud and a cover-up?  If so, how do you explain His resurrection?  Or, that Jesus didn’t know there were errors.  Then how do you explain His omniscience, because He said He knew everything.  If the second is true, that He didn’t know – there were errors there, but He was unaware – then He obviously is not God, and you can dismiss Christianity and just forget it altogether.  If the third alternative is true – He did know and covered it up – then Jesus is the devil.  If you’re going to believe in the deity of Jesus, you have no option but to believe in an infallible and inerrant Scripture, because He did.

Now, that leads us to the question, “How are we to understand how God wrote Scripture?”  Does that interest you at all?  Good, come back next week.  I can’t even begin.  Let me close with this: because the Bible is the divine truth, it is the source of blessing.  Proverbs 8:34 says, “Blessed is the man who hears Me.”  Luke 11:28: “Blessed are they who hear the word of God and obey it.”  Secondly, it is the source of virtue.  Psalm 119: “Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” 

The source of purity, John 15:3, “You are clean by the word.”  The source of victory: “By the sword of the Spirit we slay the enemy of lies and deception.”  The source of growth: “Like babes, desire the pure milk of the word,” 1 Peter 2, “that you may grow thereby.”  The source of power: “It is alive and powerful, more powerful than any other weapon.”  Source of guidance, Psalm 119:105: “It is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.” 

The Bible is the most powerful book because it is the only divine book.  It can tear you to pieces, Hebrews 4:12, split you asunder, but it can also put you back together again, 1 Peter 1, so that you are reborn according to the Word, and it can bring you great joy, “These things I write unto you that your joy may be full.”  Why is it so powerful?  Why is it so life-transforming?  Because it is not the word of men, it is the very word of God.  And next time we will look at how it is that God transmitted it through the great doctrine of inspiration.

Our Father, we thank You for the testimony of Scripture to its own veracity, to its own infallibility, to its own inerrancy, to its own inspiration.  And we know that that all is predicated on the fact that You are the living and true God, the God who cannot lie, the God who is truth, and from You comes every true word and only that which is true, so that the Bible is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, because You are the God of truth.  How wonderful it is to know that truth, to understand that truth, and to live that truth, by Your power.  We are profoundly blessed, in a world of people drowning in lies, to know the truth.  We praise You, we thank You, and we glorify You for opening our eyes and our hearts to the truth. 

And now that we have it, may we love it, may we hunger for it, may we learn it, may we proclaim it, may we defend it, and may we use it to worship You.  These things we ask because of and for the honor of Christ.  Amen.