Summer in the Systematics – Bibliology (Part One): The Authority of the Bible

Transcript

JRS 26
6/04/2023
Summer in the Systematics – Bibliology (Part One): The Authority of the Bible
Selected Scriptures
Jesse Randolph

Alright, well welcome, everyone, to our first installment of year two of “Summer in the Systematics” which is going to be our summer-long study on the subject of Bibliology as you see up here on your screen, the doctrine of the Bible, the doctrine of Scripture. I just want to make sure you realize we do have worksheets available. We’re back to the worksheets on Sunday nights for the next ten weeks. You’ll want to make sure you collect all ten and we’re going to have notebooks available in Sound Words if you want to compile all these and save them for posterity or something like that. Well, I am grateful that you have carved out some time tonight, carving out these Sunday evenings from your summer schedule, for this important study.

As I mentioned last summer when we did this, if the Lord allows, I’d like to teach our church systematic theology. I’d like to do that on Sunday evenings in the summer, not only over the next many weeks, but over the next many years. What we’ll do over the next many years, Lord willing, is cover each of these ten topics of systematic theology that you see here graphically portrayed on the screen including our topic for this year, the summer of 2023, that of Bibliology. Why though? Why are we doing this? Why would I like to take us through this study and invest all this time and all these years to this? Well, theology matters! That’s why.

Consider what Daniel B. Wallace said on this subject of theological learning, theological acumen, many years ago in one of his commentaries. He said, “Those in ministry must close the gap between the church and the academy. We have to educate believers. Instead of trying to isolate people from critical scholarship, we need to insulate them. They need to be ready for the barrage, because it is coming. The intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ” and he’s right. We do live in a period which is marked by a plague of biblical illiteracy and the abandonment of biblical principles. Here’s how Chuck Colson described the situation many years ago, he said, “We live in a new dark age. Having elevated the individual as the measure of all things, modern men and women are guided solely by their own dark passions; they have nothing above themselves to respect or obey, no principles to live or die for. Personal advancement, personal feeling, and personal autonomy are the only shrines at which they worship.” Again, he’s right.

With that being our context today, is the solution to run away from theology? Is it to run away from the study of systematic theology or any of the sub-disciplines of systematic theology, like Bibliology? Absolutely not. See, there’s no better time than the time we live in now than to be girded up with all forms of biblical truth. Exegetically and expositionally, that’s what we do typically on a Sunday morning or a Sunday evening up here. But there’s also a realm of studying theology, studying biblical truth, categorically and systematically as we’re going to be doing in these summertime studies.

Now, I’ve already used three words, “theology,” “systematic theology,” and “bibliology” which are interconnected. But they are distinct and they do require further definition. So we’re going to start our time together this evening by defining those terms up front. What is theology? What is systematic theology? And what is bibliology? Let’s start with theology. Some of this, by the way, is review from last summer, but it’s important so we’re going to go back to it.

What is theology? Well theology is a compound Greek word which includes “theos,” there’s that word up there you see, and “logos.” And “theos” is the Greek word for God and “logos” is the Greek word for word. The word “logos” means word. So you put those two words together, “theos” and “logos” and you get theology which literally means a word about God, or as we would put it in the modern vernacular, the study of God, or as some of the older theologians put it, the science of God. Now in reality, there are as many definitions of theology out there as there are theologians. But my favorite is this one that you saw last summer, from David Wells. He writes “Theology is the sustained effort to know the character, will, and acts of the triune God as he has disclosed and interpreted these for his people in Scripture... in order that we might know him, learn to think our thoughts after him, live our lives in his world on his terms, and by thought and action project his truth into our own time and culture.” That is such a clear and concise and yet comprehensive definition of what truly is a massive undertaking, this study of God. So, the simplified definition of theology, taking it from Wells here, is simply that, the study of God. But what Wells’ more robust definition here brings out is that theology requires effort, he calls it a “sustained effort.” Theology has a target: the character, will, and actions of God. Theology is trinitarian, he mentions “the triune God.” Theology has a source, Scripture. And theology has a purpose, “that we might know him, learn to think our thoughts after him, live our lives in his world on his terms, and by thought and action project his truth into our own time and culture.”

Now, there are ten traditional categories of Systematic Theology. Different men might put these in different order, and that’s fine, and according to maybe a different outline. But each would recognize these as the traditional categories of Systematic Theology. “Theology Proper,” that’s what we studied last summer, the doctrine of the existence and being of God. “Bibliology,” that’s what we are studying this summer, the doctrine of the inspiration, inerrancy, authority, and canonicity and other things of the Bible. “Christology,” the doctrine of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Pneumatology,” the doctrine of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. “Anthropology,’ the doctrine of man. “Hamartiology,” the doctrine of sin. “Soteriology,” the doctrine of salvation. “Angelology,” the doctrine of angels, holy and fallen, and Satan. “Ecclesiology,” the doctrine of the church, universal and local. And “Eschatology,” the doctrine of last things or end times.

Again, last summer we covered the doctrine of Theology Proper, also known as the Doctrine of God. This summer we are covering Bibliology and as we embark now on our study of Bibliology we do need to address a threshold question which is simply what is Bibliology? We’ve already seen that theology is the study of God, that systematic theology is the field of study which asks what the whole Bible teaches about any given subject, so what is Bibliology? You ready for this? It’s a real complicated definition. Bibliology is the doctrine of the Bible. That’s it. That’s it. Now it is multi-faceted. That’s why we’re going to study this for ten weeks, not for one hour tonight. But this, the simplest and simplified definition of Bibliology, simply the doctrine of, or you could even say, the study of, the Bible.

Within the field of Bibliology there are various subjects of study and interest. We’ll be touching upon each of these over the next many weeks. These include the authority of the Bible, that’s our subject for tonight. The inspiration of the Bible, the composition of the Bible, how it came to be (how it was put together over the many years under the guidance of the Spirit, of course), the canonicity of the Bible, the inerrancy of the Bible, the translation of the Bible (how it came to be in our English from the Greek and the Hebrew original manuscripts), the interpretation of the Bible, the criticism of the Bible, the clarity of the Bible, the illumination of the Bible, the sufficiency of the Bible among others.

This subject, Bibliology, is a vitally important one. Not only because it’s recognized as being part and parcel of what is recognized as the field of Systematic Theology, but because of the times in which we live. Harold Lindsell, many years ago, in his “The Battle for the Bible” book said this, “Of all the doctrines connected with the Christian faith, none is more important than the one that has to do with the basis of our religious knowledge. For anyone who professes the Christian faith the root question is: From where do I get my knowledge on which my faith is based? The answers to this question are varied, of course, but for the Christian at least it always comes full circle to the Bible. When all has been said and done, the only true and dependable source for Christianity lies in the book we call the Bible.” More recently, John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue have said that “The Bible is fundamental to evangelical theology because it provides the sole infallible and ultimate authority for a truly Christian worldview. That the Bible should play such an exclusive role is only reasonable, since from beginning to end it consistently claims to be God’s Word to man. There can be no higher, more authoritative source of knowledge than this Word. Without it there is no true theology.”

Picking up on that last sentence there from MacArthur and Mayhue, that there is no true theology without an understanding and affirmation of God’s word, that’s no new thought, by the way, from MacArthur and Mayhue. They are picking up on a whole line of older theologians who make that same claim, that in order to truly be a theologian, a systematic theologian, one must have a right view of the Scriptures. Consider Lewis Sperry Chafer many years ago in his classic ten volume set on Systematic Theology. He says, “Since Systematic Theology is the collecting, scientifically arranging, comparing, exhibiting, and defending of all facts from every source concerning God and His works, and since the Bible in its original writings is by its own worthy claims and by every test devout minds may apply to it the inerrant Word of God, it follows that, if any progress is to be made in this science,” that of theology, “the theologian must be a Biblicist; one who is not only a Biblical scholar but also a believer in the divine character of each and every portion of the text of the Bible.” Chafer also said, “The student who in spite of the claims of the Bible to be the Word of God is yet groping for added light on that aspect of truth, cannot even begin the study of Systematic Theology.” Sola scriptura would be another way of saying that. He says, “…as surgery must proceed on the basis of belief in the existence of the mortal body, so, and in like manner, Systematic Theology must proceed on the basis of the belief that the Bible is, in all its parts, God’s own Word to man.” I’m on a Chafer kick, so one more. He says, “Systematic Theology is not an end in itself; its purpose is to classify and clarify the truth set forth in the Scriptures. It should become a grand contribution to the theologian’s understanding of the Bible itself.”

Now, I’ve already mentioned that tonight’s topic in our first installment in our study of Bibliology is the authority of the Bible. That’s our main topic for this evening. Before we get too much further into our study, we need to lay out some basic definitions starting with the word “Bible,” or “the Bible.” The English word “Bible” is derived from the Greek word “biblion” which means book or roll or even scroll. The name comes from another word, “Byblos” which denoted the papyrus plants which grew in marshes or riverbanks of the time, primarily along the Nile. Writing material, going way back, came from the papyrus plant by cutting and striping out the pith in the center of the plant. Taking those strips and setting them out in the sun to dry. Then those strips were laid out in these horizontal rows and then rows of vertical strips were glued on top of the horizontal rows in this sort of crisscross fashion like plywood is constructed today. Then the horizontal rows on these strips of papyrus were smoother and they became what was then the writing surface. Then sections of these crisscrossed strips were glued together and sometimes these scrolls or rolls could become up to 30 feet in length. Eventually, this word “biblion,” when put in the plural “biblia” came to mean books. And then it was applied to the scriptures as in all books of the Old and New Testaments. So “biblia,” plural, refers to the books and this is actually the word from which we get our English word “Bible.”

Now we often see the word “Scripture” used interchangeably with the word “Bible.” The word “Scripture” comes from this Greek word “graphe” which simply means writing. The writings of the Old Testament we know were eventually compiled or collected into three groups of scriptures or writings, the Law, and then the Prophets, and then the Writings, or Psalms. And those constituted, those three groups, the 39 books of the Old Testament and those writings, the Scriptures, were then formally codified into the Old Testament canon. (We’re going to get into canonicity in a few weeks.) Then, in the New Testament the noun and verb form of that term right there, “graphe,” is used almost 140 times or just about 140 times. They are always used, this term “graphe,” to refer to the scriptures, most often the Old Testament scriptures. But we also know there are a couple [New Testament] examples, one where Peter refers to Paul’s writings as scripture and one where Paul refers to Luke’s writings as scripture. So there’s a couple examples where New Testament scripture, using that word “graphe,” refers to other New Testament scripture. But usually the term refers to Old Testament scripture. Sometimes this word “graphe” is used to describe all of the Scriptures in its totality, in its whole. For instance, we see that in Matthew 21:42, it says, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner stone?” Or in Luke 24:27, it says, “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” This is the plural form here of “graphe” referring to all of the Scripture. Or Luke 24:45 says, “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,” this of course is Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Or John 5:39 says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.” Or Romans 15:4 says “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” In other places, that word “graphe” is used to describe individual parts of the Scripture. So all these ones we just went through refer to the scriptures in totality, but that word “graphe” is also used to describe individual scriptures. Like in John 13:18, it says, “I know the ones I have chosen;” these are the words of Jesus, of course, “but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats My bread has lifted up his heel against Me.’ ” Or Acts 1:16, “Brethren, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas.” Or Romans 11:2, “God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?” In other places, that word “graphe” is used in the phrase “the Scripture says,” which is fairly synonymous with saying God has said or God has said directly. Such as in Romans 4:3. “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ ” Galatians 4:30, “But what does the Scripture,” graphe, “say? ‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman.’” 1 Timothy 5:18, “For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,’ and ‘The laborer is worthy of his wages.’” Scriptures we know are given various other descriptors in the New Testament. They are called the “holy Scriptures” in Romans 1:2. They are called the “sacred writings” in II Timothy 3:15. The classic passage we know here is 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture,” (ta graphe), “is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” Because Scriptures are God-breathed they are authoritative and without error in all that they teach.

That’s what this lesson, all of our lessons are going to be about in this “Summer in the Systematics” series -- the Bible, the Scriptures. And again, tonight, we’re going to start with this topic, the authority of the Bible. So here’s the basic premise for tonight: because the Bible is God’s Word, because the Scriptures are God’s Word, they inherently possess divine authority as God Himself is speaking to us directly through the pages of this book. The authority of the Bible refers to the fact that as God’s Word, the Scriptures inherently possess the right to command and to enforce our obedience to what they proclaim and what they reveal. This right stems from a key fact which is that the Bible is revelation from God Himself. That’s what we’re going to spend a good portion of our time this evening discussing, the Bible’s revelatory nature.

In fact, that’s the first point on your worksheet if you’re going to be taking notes here tonight. The first heading on your sheet there is “The Bible’s Revelatory Nature.” Flowing out of that fact that the Bible is revelation from God are several undergirding truths about the Bible which only serve to bolster and strengthen its authority as God’s revelation to man. Those undergirding truths as we’ll see on the next part of the outline are the Bible’s claims (don’t worry I’m going to go quick here), the Bible’s constancy, the Bible’s continuity, those are points two, three, and four, and then the Bible’s insights, the Bible’s influence, and the Bible’s impact, five, six, and seven. We’ll get there eventually.

But let’s start with our first subject for this evening, the Bible’s revelatory nature. As we come upon our first point here on your worksheet we’re going to work through this topic of “revelation.” Not the book of Revelation, but the broader topic of God’s “revelation.” That is, God’s disclosure of what was previously unknown. Now, that word “revelation” comes from the Greek term “apokalupsis,” which means revealing or uncovering, or unveiling. In Christian theology, that word, “unveiling” refers to God’s unveiling to mankind of Himself. Of His divine will, and of divine truth. Here’s how Bernard Ramm defined the term “revelation.” He says, “In the broadest sense revelation is the sum total of the ways in which God makes himself known.”
Then here’s Henry Clarence Thiessen defining revelation. He says that “revelation” may be defined as “that act of God whereby he discloses himself or communicates truth to the mind, whereby he makes manifest to his creatures that which could not be known in any other way. The revelation may occur in a single, instantaneous act, or it may extend over a long period of time; and this communication of himself and his truth may be perceived by the human mind in varying degrees of fullness.” The important emphasis that’s being made here is that God discloses truth about Himself that man otherwise would not know. And then revelation is always split into two categories. Revelation is both “general,” God revealing Himself to mankind through things like history and nature and creation. And then there’s a category of revelation that’s known as “special” revelation where He reveals Himself to specific individuals such as through His Son or through the Scriptures. While general revelation is not adequate to bring a person to salvation, it still is, as we see revealed in the Scriptures, a necessary antecedent to one eventually coming to salvation. For instance, we’re going to talk through some categories of “general revelation” here first. Here’s one of them, creation. Creation is a category of general revelation. Everybody sees it and everybody witnesses it and what it points to, to everybody is the existence of the God we all know is there. That’s Psalm 19:1-2. “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”

That’s also captured in Romans 1:18-20. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” So, creation is an aspect of general revelation. Another form of general revelation is God’s providential control and provision. That includes His providential control of rulers and nations to accomplish His purposes. Daniel 2:21 says “It is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings.” Or Acts 14:16 says “In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways.” God’s providential control also includes His providential goodness to and provision in supplying mankind with the things they need to live and function. “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Not all farmers are righteous. He sends His rain down as He has the last couple of days, even on unrighteous farmers. Or Acts 14:17, “He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful season, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” His providential control and provision includes His providential preservation of the planet that He’s permitted us to live on. That’s Colossians 1:16. He created all things. “For by Him all things were created, both in heavens and on earth.” He also upholds all things. That’s Colossians 1:17 “In Him all things hold together.” Or Hebrews 1:3 He “upholds all things by the word of His power.” That includes His upholding of our very lives! Acts 17:25 says “He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.” Or verse 28 “In Him we live and move and exist.”

Another category of general revelation is the conscience. The conscience. What is conscience? Well, Walter Elwell in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology defines it this way. “Conscience is an awareness restricted to the moral sphere. It is a moral awareness…Conscience is that faculty by which one distinguishes between the morally right and wrong, which urges one to do that which he recognizes to be right.” Much better than Elwell is the Apostle Paul who in Romans 2:14-15 says “When Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.” The Law, the apostle Paul is saying, is “written in their hearts” meaning, God has placed intuitional knowledge concerning Himself within the heart of man. Here’s how Bruce Demarest describes that concept. He says, “Man intuitively knows not only that God values goodness and abhors evil but that he is ultimately accountable to such a righteous Power.”

So that’s all under the heading of General Revelation. As I went through that I realized you don’t have enough space on your worksheet to cover all that, do you? Because we’re on point one and I have a lot more to say under point one so maybe next time I’ll get my spacing a little bit more accurate because we need to talk about Special Revelation now. We’re actually going to spend more time on Special Revelation than we did just now on General Revelation. And we’re going to do so because the Bible, our subject of study this summer, is a form of Special Revelation. These 66 books that we hold in our hands represent one form of Special Revelation. But the Bible is not the only form of Special Revelation. Rather, God has revealed Himself specially to people in many different ways over the centuries. Let’s go through a few examples here, just to see what I mean. The Lot. The Lot. Remember those? The divine dice from and earlier point in history? The “lot” we know was used to, in some way, communicate the mind of God to man. Proverbs 16:33 says “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” We see the lot put into practice when Judas was replaced following his betrayal of our Lord. Acts 1:24-26 says “They prayed,” these are the surviving disciples, apostles, “and said, ‘You, Lord, You who know the hearts of all men, show which one of these two You have chosen to occupy this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.’ And they drew lots for them, and the lot fell to Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.”

Here's another form of Special Revelation, the Urim and the Thummim. See in the Old Testament days the breastplate that the high priest wore in the Old Testament era, it was this square piece of material that sat on the front of his chest and there was a flap that covered it and sat as sort of like a pouch. In that pouch sat these twelve precious stones on which were engraved the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Urim and Thummim were possibly these two precious stones placed inside the pouch that were used, like the lot, to determine God’s will. I’m not going to go through all the passages about the Urim and Thummim. These are some for your consideration also you might remember that Doug Bookman’s PhD dissertation was on the Urim and Thummim so go dig that one up and you can study it to your heart’s content.

Another form of Special Revelation would be dreams. God used dreams to communicate to various individuals in the Old and the New Testaments. Abimelech in Genesis 20. Jacob in Genesis 31. Laban in Genesis 31. Joseph, his famous dream related to his brothers in Genesis 37. Daniel in Daniel 2. Joseph about his wife being with child, or Mary being with child in Matthew 1. Though dreams are a common experience for all of us today, the dreams of these individuals were used in a special way by God to reveal truth to them and by extension, us today.

Here's another form of Special Revelation, visions. Visions. I mentioned it earlier this morning. There was some aspect of visions in the Colossian heresy that we’re going to get to in many weeks in our Sunday morning services. But there is a legitimate form of vision that God used to specially reveal Himself to various people especially prophets in Old Testament times. We think of Isaiah 6, the prophet Isaiah said “In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory’.” That’s not a dream. That’s a vision. Or Ezekiel 1:1 “Now it came about in the thirtieth year, on the fifth day of the fourth month, while I was by the river Chebar among the exiles, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” You could also put down Revelation 1 and John’s vision of the ascended, glorified Christ there in the book of Revelation.

Next would be theophanies, another form of Special Revelation. Before the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ He made certain preincarnate appearances which were typically associated with the angel of the Lord who would communicate His messages, God’s messages to people. Most famously is that of Exodus 3:2, the burning bush incident. It says, “The angel of the LORD appeared to [Moses] in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.” That was a form of special revelation. Next we have direct communication. “Special revelation” includes not just theophanies and visions and dreams, not just the lot, and not just the Urim and Thummim. It includes direct mouth-to-ear communication in which God spoke to various prophets and representatives and mouthpieces such as Adam, Cain, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Saul, later Paul, John, and many others. They received direct communication from God.

Next one, angels. God also used angels to carry His message to people, Daniel 9. It says, “Now while I was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the LORD my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God, while I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering.” Or this one, we all know around Christmas time especially, “But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord’.” So angels would be another means by which Special Revelation is imparted.

Next would be the Prophets. Old Testament prophets were charged with delivering God’s message directly to the people of Israel. We spent eight months on Sunday evenings going through Hosea. That was an example of prophetic special revelation from an appointed prophet to God’s people. Here’s another example of that. Zechariah 1 “In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah the prophet, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo saying, ‘The LORD was very angry with your fathers.” There were also New Testament prophets, that’s a whole different topic, who were charged with a similar task. Ephesians 3:4-5 says “when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.” The prophets spoke with authority because they were communicating the word of the Lord.

Miracles, another form of Special Revelation whether it be a floating axe head or a resurrection or a leper like Naman suddenly being made clean. The supernatural character of a miracle would disclose God’s divine power. It would reveal God, in some sense, to man. The Lord Jesus Christ, Himself identified that when He performed various miracles during His earthly ministry, He was doing so to showcase the fact that He was in fact, God manifest in the flesh. We see that in Matthew 11. It says “John, while imprisoned, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to Him, ‘Are you the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them’.” So miracles, yet another form of Special Revelation.

Then we have Jesus Christ Himself. Undoubtedly, the incarnation of Jesus Christ was a major avenue of special revelation. He revealed the nature of God. John 1:18 says “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He” meaning Christ, “has explained Him,” meaning God the Father. Christ revealed the power of God. John 3:2 “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus Christ revealed the wisdom of God. John 7:46, “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.” He revealed the glory of God. John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” He revealed the life of God. John 1:4 “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” He revealed the compassion of God. John 5:37 “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” He revealed the love of God. Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” About this subject of Jesus Christ being a form of special revelation to man, again Chafer said this. “Christ is the voice of God speaking to men, and that is a direct, uncomplicated revelation of God. When beholding or hearing the Son, men are enabled to know what God is like. God could not draw nearer, nor could He disclose more clearly the wonders of His person, the perfections of His purpose, nor the depths of His love and grace, than He has done in the incarnation, which in the scope of its purpose embraced the life, teachings, example, death, and resurrection of the eternal Son, the Second Person of the Godhead.”

Now, we come back to our principal subject of study and our final category of Special Revelation, the Bible. Special revelation as now recorded in the Bible furnishes the content of God’s message to the world. Who He is in His character and how sinners like us can be reconciled to Him and be forgiven of their sin through what’s offered through His Son, the death of His Son. God the Son’s words, God the Son’s works reveal the Father and His plan of salvation and His offer and it is all accurately recorded in the pages of Scripture.

Now, a few additional points on this topic of the Bible as Special Revelation and then we’ll wrap up this point. First, the Bible is varied in its themes. It is doctrinal. It is devotional. It’s historical. It’s prophetical. It’s practical. Second, the Bible is partial, and by that I mean it does not present the full mind of God because there’s no way that you could put the full mind of God and contain it within 66 books. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “There are certain “secret things” that still “belong to the LORD.” But third, the Bible is completely sufficient and truthful and in it we have as II Peter 1:3 says, all that we have, all that we need “pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” The Bible’s not just sufficient for us, it is truthful. John 17:17, “Your word is truth.” Fourth, we know that biblical revelation is progressive. Hebrews 1:1 says “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son.” We also know that biblical revelation, the Bible, is eternal. Psalm 119:89 says “Forever, O LORD, your word is settled in heaven.” We also know that biblical revelation is final. Jude 3 says it represents the faith that “was once for all handed down to the saints.” Meaning nothing can be added to, nothing can be taken away from it. Biblical revelation is purposeful. It has a purpose to it. “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

So, we’ve covered our first major topic for this evening. The Bible’s revelatory nature, namely, that is a form of Special Revelation. And in our day, the chief form of Special Revelation. We’re now going to work through various other matters that pertain to our over-arching topic for this evening, the authority of the Bible. This is our second point, is the Bible’s claims. That’s your second heading this evening, the Bible’s claims.

One source of the Bible’s authority in the lives of believers like us is that it is what the Bible itself claims to be. That is, what the human authors of Scripture recognized and affirmed what it was they were writing as it was coming out as the Spirit was moving them. The Scriptures affirm that what we have in them are the very words of God to man. Some 3,800 times in the Bible, that’s a rough number there, we see some version of the words “God said” or “thus saith the Lord” in the Bible. You know we see language like this in the Old Testament. “Then God spoke all these words,” Exodus 20 or Leviticus 4, “Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying.” Deuteronomy 4:2 “You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” Or you get to the prophets and you see very similar language, “Hear the word of the LORD.” Jeremiah 1 “The word of the LORD came to me.”

We also see this in the New Testament. The phrase “the word of God” appears around 40 times in the New Testament. Jesus and His apostles testified that the Old Testament writings they were speaking about were the word of God. Matthew 15:6, Jesus here says, “you have invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition.” Or in the apostolic writings, Paul here says “Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? Great in every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” The Word of God is what Jesus preached. It says, “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God.” The word of God is what the apostles taught. Paul recognized that the things he was writing were the Lord’s commandments. He said in 1 Corinthians 14:37 “If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment.” Paul testified that what he preached, men were to receive as the very word of God. 1 Thessalonians 2: 13 “For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.” Similar to Paul was Peter who said “we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.” Like Peter, and Paul was John, who said “We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.” So according to Scripture, the person of God and the word of God are closely intertwined, closely interrelated. God is pure and unchanging and reliable and living and active. His Word is pure and unchangeable and relying and living and active. No other source of knowledge, no other literature written by humankind has such qualities or functions.

Now, the objection is often asserted, it will be something like this. Now “By appealing to the Bible to support your claim that the Bible is God’s Word, aren’t you engaging in circular reasoning?” And the answer is I absolutely am. Yes, but that does not make the argument invalid because all arguments to some absolute authority must ultimately appeal to that very authority for proof. Otherwise, that authority that they are appealing to would not be absolute. It wouldn’t be the highest authority. The problem is not unique to the Christian who is arguing for the authority of the Bible. Rather, everyone, either implicitly or explicitly, engages in some form of circular reasoning when they are defending their position for something being their ultimate authority. By way of example, someone might say that human reason is the final authority. But really what they are saying there is, that their reasoning capacities should be the final authority because that’s the most reasonable thing to them. Or somebody might say that logic is their ultimate authority. In doing so what they are doing is they are appealing to their own logical faculties as being what they believe to be the most logical source of insight. So we all do it. We all engage in circularity when we argue for an ultimate standard of truth. The real question is which ultimate standard of truth are we going to select? Which is most time-tested and proven which bears the marks of the living God? I appreciate what Henry Clarence Thiessen said on this topic in response to this circularity objection. He said, “But if we can prove the genuineness of the books of the Bible and the truthfulness of the things which they report on other subjects, then we are justified in also accepting their testimony in their own behalf. If we have verified the credentials of an ambassador and have satisfied ourselves as to his truthfulness in regard to his authorization, then we may also accept his personal statements respecting the nature of his powers and the source of his information.” Building on what Thiessen is saying here, of all documents and literature that have ever been written, only the Bible consistently and fully shows itself to be in accord with all that we can see and know about the world around us and about ourselves and about God. So, when the Bible claims not only to be a revelation from God but an infallible record of revelation from God, an inerrant record of revelation from God, we are to accept that claim.

That brings us to another topic pertaining to the Bible being an authoritative revelation from God and here’s the third point on your worksheets, the Bible’s constancy. Another way to define that but it doesn’t have a “c” in it, is the Bible is indestructible. The indestructibility of the Bible. Really when we consider the harrowing circumstances under which the Bible has survived over the centuries, its survival, its indestructibility, its constancy is actually amazing. Emery Bancroft in his Christian Theology says this. “Not only has the Bible received more veneration and adoration than any other book, but it has also been the object of more persecution and opposition.” And he’s right. I mean, consider just the following efforts. I’m going to rattle off a few that have been made to suppress or destroy the truths of the Bible over the centuries.

In 303 A.D., Diocletian, the Roman Emperor at the time demanded that every copy of the Bible within the Roman Empire be destroyed by fire. In fact, he killed so many Christians and destroyed so many Bibles at the time that the Christians of the empire at that time went underground and they remained silent for a lengthy period of time and that led Diocletian to believe that he had actually been successful. That had actually wiped out the Christians and stamped out the Scriptures. In fact, he even caused a medal to be struck at this time that read, “The Christian religion is destroyed, and the worship of the gods restored.” It was only a few years later that Constantine was to be made the new Roman Emperor and Constantine came to faith and then it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Then there came the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages the scholastics emphasized the creeds over the Scriptures. While many of them sought to support their creeds with Scripture, tradition played an increasingly important role in those days. The state church of that time really assumed the authority of interpreting Scripture and the study of Scripture by layman was restricted and regarded with great suspicion, if not absolutely forbidden.

Then came the time of the Reformation when the Bible was translated into the lingua franca, the language of the people. The established church then put these severe restrictions on the reading of the Bible on the ground that people, laypeople, people like us were incapable of interpreting it. The reader was not to seek or interpret the meaning of Scripture for himself. Laws were even made to prohibit the publication of the Bible. We know many of the Christian martyrs around that time, that they laid down their lives for the simple privilege of being able to read their bible in their native language. But neither imperial edict or ecclesiastical restraints could or would succeed in exterminating the Bible. No, the greater the efforts to stamp out the Scriptures the greater the circulation of the Scriptures and the greater the influence of the Bible in the world as it continues to have today. All of those facts I’ve just rattled off relate to the constancy of the Bible. That it really does constitute divine revelation. It truly is authoritative. As it says, again in Psalm 119:89, “Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven.” Or Isaiah 40:8 “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

That brings us to another topic pertaining to the Bible being an authoritative revelation from God and here’s our fourth point on our worksheet. The Bible’s continuity. Further evidence that the Bible is truly from God and a form of special revelation from Him and, therefore, authoritative, is the continuity of its teaching and its message. Notwithstanding sometimes the somewhat unusual nature of its composition. See, the Bible came from some forty different authors from very diverse vocations in life. The Bible was not only written by diverse authors, it was written from various different locations on multiple different continents and diverse geographic settings. Moses probably wrote in a desert somewhere. David composed his psalms in the countryside. Solomon contemplated the Proverbs in his royal courts. John wrote as a banished prisoner on the isle of Patmos. Paul wrote, as we saw this morning, several of his letters from prison. These authors wrote over a period of some 1500 years; yet the Bible presents us with this marvelous, unified whole. There are no contradictions, no inconsistencies in its pages. We’ll get more to that when we get to inerrancy. There is this incredible harmony and continuity within its pages. The Bible recognizes the personality, and the unity, and the triunity of God. It magnifies the holiness of God and love of God and the grace of God. It accounts for the creatures, like you and me, being a direct creation of God and that we are made in the likeness of God. It represents man’s revolt against the revealed will of God. It pictures sin as inexcusable and under the judgment of God. It teaches the sovereign rule of God in the universe. The Scriptures portray the deity, the personhood, the life, the death of Jesus Christ. The Scriptures portray the personhood, the deity of the work of the Holy Spirit. Scriptures portray in great detail God’s provision of salvation and the conditions on which it may be experienced. The Scriptures delineate God’s plan for Israel as well as God’s plan for the Church. The Scriptures portray the culmination of how things will go in the future from the the Rapture to the Tribulation to the Millennium to Second Coming. The Second Coming, the Millennium, eternal state. Surely this book comes from the hand of an infinite God who has designed that all these things would come to pass. R.A. Torrey speaking of this continuity says “It is not a superficial unity, but a profound unity ... The more deeply we study, the more complete do we find the unity to be. The unity is also an organic one—that is, it is not the unity of a dead thing, like a stone, but of a living thing, like a plant. In the early books of the Bible we have the germinant thought; as we go on we have the plant, and further on the bud, and then the blossom, and then the ripened fruit. In Revelation we find the ripened fruit of Genesis.” So as we study the Scripture as a whole it quickly becomes apparent that no human being could have orchestrated the harmony of all that’s taught in Scripture. The divine authorship of the Bible is the only answer.

That’s totally different from other books. Other religious books like those of Islam and Buddhism which are for the most part randomly cobbled together collections of mixed-up material with no real beginning, or middle, or end. The Bible is an amazingly unified whole. What man or what men could have come up with this? What man or men could have come up with such a worldview with such harmony and such continuity? The answer is no man, and no men could have ever done so. The only explanation is that this book came from God. Rene Pache says “Only the Lord, for whom time has no meaning, can take in with a glance the destiny of the universe. From eternity to eternity He is God (Psalm 90:2). He envisions at once the eternity behind us and that before us, so to speak. He alone, the One who inspired all of Scripture, could have given to it the singleness of perspective which it has.”

Chafer again says “The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books which have been written by over forty different authors—kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, physicians, statesmen, scholars, poets, and plowmen—who lived their lives in various countries and experienced no conference or agreement one with another, and over a period of not less than sixteen hundred years of human history. Because of these obstacles to continuity, the Bible would be naturally the most heterogeneous, incommensurable, inconsonant, and contradictory collection of human opinions the world has ever seen; but, on the contrary, it is just what it is designed to be, namely, a homogenous, uninterrupted, harmonious, and orderly account of the whole history of God’s dealings with man.” One more Chafer quote, “The theory that the Bible does not originate in God alone, imposes the necessity of believing that restricted and temporal creatures of the earth have themselves arisen to the sublime conceptions of eternity and of heaven as well as to the eternal Being of God, and are able to sit in judgment over the eternal destiny of all things. Man could not write such a Book if he would.” Indeed.

Here’s our next heading for tonight, the Bible’s Insights. By “insights” I mean, predictive insights, meaning prophetic insights. It’s a book of prophecy. The Bible is filled with future-oriented prophetic statements. We know that many of its prophetic statements, many of its prophecies have already been fulfilled. Because only God can know and reveal the future and because the human authors of Scripture were charged with delivering prophetic information to future generations, if it can be demonstrated that those prophecies revealed in those previous pages of Scripture were fulfilled then we can establish the divine authorship and mind behind those prophecies. That’s exactly what we see in Scriptures. Even what we saw in Hosea. The fact that Israel was going to go off into captivity first and then Judah was going to go into captivity. Then there was going to be ultimately a return for Judah and a rebuilding and a restoration in a subsequent generation of people of Judah. That that was all fulfilled we see much of that fulfilled in later Old Testament passages including the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

But of course, we can’t go too much further when we talk about this matter of prophecy without mentioning the prophetic writings related to the first coming of Christ. The prophecies associated with the first coming of Christ such as the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 that He would be virgin born. Or the prophecy in Micah 5:2 that He would be born in this obscure little Judean town called Bethlehem. Those are just a couple of the prophecies associated with the birth of Christ that were fulfilled in plain view for all to see. We also know there were many Old Testament prophecies surrounding the death of Christ which were fulfilled. Do a study one of these days on Psalm 22 and how many of those prophecies were fulfilled in the final days of Christ’s life. Here’s E. Schuyler English, he by the way was the former chairman of the editorial committee of The New Scofield Reference Bible. He said, “More than twenty Old Testament predictions relating to events that would surround the death of Christ, words written centuries before his first advent, were fulfilled with precision within a twenty-four-hour period at the time of his crucifixion alone.” Or Chafer again, “Who would be prepared to believe that hundreds of predictions which are fulfilled on the pages of history and extending over thousands of years of intervening time are the work of unaided men?” To paraphrase, what man could foresee or predict any of these things? Again, the answer is “no man.” Again, this establishes that what we have in the Bible is divine revelation. God given revelation and therefore, authoritative revelation.

Second to last one, the Bible’s influence. There’s no doubt that other religious books, whether they be the Koran or the Book of Mormon or the writings of Confucius, have had some degree of impact on our world. But there is a vast difference in the type of influence those books have had and those writings have had in comparison to that of the Bible. Those books have led to a low view of God and a low view of sin even to the point of ignoring it. Those books have produced a Stoic indifference toward life or at best an attempt to re-shape people morally. The Bible, on the contrary, has produced the highest results in all walks of life. It’s resulted in the finest of art and architecture and literature and music. The fundamental laws of nations have been shaped by the Bible. The greatest social reforms have ever been enacted have stemmed from biblical revelation. Honest Abe said it. “The Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good of the Savior of the world is communicated to us through the Book.” Noah Webster, he of dictionary fame, said “The Bible is the Book of faith, and a Book of doctrine, and a Book of morals, and a Book of religion, of special revelation from God; but it is also a Book which teaches man his responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow man. The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good, and the best corrector of all that is evil, in human society; the best Book for regulating temporal concerns of men, and the only Book that can serve as an infallible guide to future felicity. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed form their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.” Then Horace Greeley said, “It is impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible reading people.” By contrast it’s possible to get a society and people in a society to believe anything no matter how ludicrous it is, no matter how illogical it is if you take them away from biblical truth. In fact, here I’m going to show you now a few images that will tell you what biblical illiteracy coupled with the sin which naturally reigns in human heart produces. No comment needed. That last one by the way is the Pride month graphic for Sesame Street. So, the next time people say they are not coming after your children, show them that. Where is there a book in the history of our world which has come even remotely close to the Bible in terms of its influence? Its beneficent influence upon mankind? The answer is no such book exists. The Bible is authoritative revelation from God.

Last one and I’ll make it short, the Bible’s impact. The reason we’re all here under the same roof tonight with different backgrounds and different skin tones and different hair colors and different sin proclivities and different pasts is that we share a common salvation. A salvation that’s common through Jesus Christ. A salvation that has been offered to us through the pages of this book, the Bible. The Bible, in other words, has impacted us. Not merely as a form of academic study but as a source of life-giving truth. Henry Rogers said “This collection of books has taken such hold of the world as no other. The literature of Greece, which goes up like incense from that land of temples and heroic deeds, has not half the influence of this book from a nation,” meaning Israel, “despised alike in ancient and in modern times... It goes equally to the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar, and colors the talk of the streets. It enters men’s closets, mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. The Bible attends men in sickness, when the fever of the world is on them… It is the better part of our sermons; it lifts man above himself. Our best of uttered prayers are in its storied speech, wherewith our fathers and the patriarchs prayed. The timid man, about to wake from his dream of life, looks through the glass of Scripture, and his eye grows bright; he does not fear to stand alone, to tread the way unknown and distant, to take the death angel by the hand, and bid farewell to wife and babes and home...Some thousand famous writers come up in this century to be forgotten in the next. But the silver cord of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden bowl broken, as Time chronicles his tens of centuries passed by.”

The Bible’s authority, the Bible’s ability to change and transform lives, to present the gospel to the unbeliever and to strengthen the believer with truth from God on high is simply unparalleled. James 1:18 “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.” And now, as believers we are to be “putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness” and “in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.” As we did this morning we’ll close this with a quote from John Wesley. He says, “I want to know one thing, the way to heaven...God Himself has condescended to teach the way...He hath written down in a book. O give me that book: At any price give me the book of God!”

Let’s pray. God thank you for this chance this evening to study this important topic. The topic of the Bible, what it is, what it represents, its authority, You speaking to us through it. God I’m so looking forward to this study that we’ll have in the weeks ahead as we come face to face with what Your word has revealed about all things pertaining to the Scriptures. God praise Your name for granting us the ability to hear from You through Your word. To know that we can wake up and we can take with us and we can pull up on our phones now and we can listen to have it played to us, the very words of the living God. May we never take for granted that You have communicated to us. That You have communicated to us clearly and perfectly and sufficiently. May we never be a people who are neglectful of the words that You have given to us but rather be a people who take in Your word and live out Your word, ultimately for Your glory. Thank you for this day. Thank you for the rich time of study that we’ve had in morning and evening services. We just ask that You get everybody home safely and that we would have a fruitful week in the Lord. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.