And then
you'll
remember that we were listing some of the
wonderful advantages that Christ's kingdom offered.
Just by way of review, we talked about
the forgiveness of sins.
What a wonderful thing that is, the forgiveness
of sins.
He's in chapter 1-7, in whom we
have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins.
Eternal life, John 3-16, known to all
of us.
Love, not lust.
The love that God has shown us, or
the love that's shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit.
Joy, independent of circumstances.
Romans 14-17.
Peace, Romans 5-1.
Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The wonderful hope that we have, Hebrew 6
-10, an anchor of the soul, both sure
and steadfast.
And we talked about the worldwide family, that
is the portion of all of those who
are in Christ's kingdom.
And then last night we came down to
the subject of the Bible, 2 Timothy 3,
chapter 16.
And I'd like to just pause on that
subject of the Bible this morning and talk
a little bit about it.
Just think what the Bible has meant in
your life.
Think what your life would be today if
you didn't have the Bible.
Really a wonderful treasure.
The Bible is always under attack.
It's under attack, and our day always has
been and always will be.
And I think it's good for us to
refresh our minds on what the Scriptures teach
about the Bible.
We believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of
the Scriptures.
The verbal inspiration of the Scriptures means that
the very words that God gave were inspired
of him.
They were God's words, the very words as
originally given.
1 Corinthians 2, verse 13.
Perhaps I could just explain this chapter a
little bit.
In this chapter, Paul is dealing with three
specific subjects with regard to the Holy Scriptures.
The first subject is revelation.
He tells us how the Spirit of God
revealed the Scriptures to the prophets and apostles
of the New Testament period.
Revelation.
For instance, in verse 7, we, and when
you come to we in this chapter, it's
not we ourselves sitting here at Skyland Bible
Conference.
It's the apostles of the New Testament period.
We speak the wisdom of God in a
mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before
the ages for our glory, which none of
the rulers of this age knew, for had
they known, they would not have crucified the
Lord of glory.
But as it is written, I have not
seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into
the heart of man the things which God
has prepared for those who love him.
Now, Paul here quotes from Isaiah chapter 64,
verse 4, and we usually apply that verse
to heaven, don't we?
No eye has seen, nor ear heard, has
never entered into the heart of man the
wonderful things that are reserved for us in
heaven.
But that's really not, I mean, that's good.
It's a good application of the verse, but
it's not what the verse is saying.
It's saying Isaiah is saying in that verse
that nobody has ever conceived the wonderful truth
that would be revealed in the New Testament
era.
That's what he's really saying.
In Isaiah's time, no eye had ever seen,
no ear had ever heard, never entered into
the heart of man the things that God
has prepared for us in this dispensation.
You say, how do you know?
Because the next verse says so.
But God has revealed them to us by
his spirit, and we have them today in
the pages of the New Testament.
The things that Isaiah was speaking about in
chapter 64 and verse 4 are with us
today in the pages of the New Testament.
For the spirit searches all things, yea, the
deep things are.
That's revelation.
God revealed these wonderful truths to the prophets
and apostles of the New Testament era.
Then you have inspiration, verse 13.
These things we always speak, also speak.
The we here is the apostles.
These things we also speak.
Now notice, not in words which man's wisdom
teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches.
Comparing spiritual things with spiritual, or conveying spiritual
truths with spirit-given words.
If that verse says anything at all, it
teaches that the very words which the apostle
Paul wrote were words which were given to
him by the Holy Spirit of God.
I think it's very important to see that.
These things we also speak, not in words
which man's wisdom teaches.
God didn't say to Paul, well Paul, just
sit down and write it the way you
think it should be.
You write it according to human wisdom.
He didn't do that.
Words which the Holy Spirit teaches, conveying spiritual
truths with spirit-given words.
Inspiration of the scriptures.
And then our understanding of the scriptures, verse
14.
But the natural man does not receive the
things of the Spirit of God, for they
are foolishness to him, nor can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned.
But he who is spiritual judges all things,
yet he himself is rightly judged by no
man.
For who has known the mind of the
Lord, that he may instruct him, but we
have the mind of Christ.
So we believe that the very words which
we have in the scriptures as originally given,
were the very words of God.
Actually, the Bible goes beyond the words of
scripture.
Jesus said not one jot or tittle would
pass from the law till all be fulfilled.
Jot or tittle.
Let me give you an illustration of what
that could mean.
This would be an equivalent today.
A jot would be like an apostrophe mark.
It's greater than a word, isn't it?
Smaller than a word.
And the tittle would be a stroke.
For instance, think of the difference between a
capital F and a capital E.
There's only one difference between a capital F
and a capital E, and that's that bottom
stroke on the E, right?
Jesus said not one would pass from the
law till all be fulfilled.
That's pretty minute inspiration, isn't it?
And not only that, but the apostle Paul
writing to the Galatians makes the distinction between
the singular and the plural as being inspired.
He said not to seeds, which are many,
but to thy seed, singular, which is Christ.
The difference between the singular and the plural.
We believe in the verbal inspiration of the
scriptures, and it even goes beyond verbal, doesn't
it?
Goes to jots and tittles, and goes to
singulars and plurals.
And we believe that the entire Bible is
God-breathed from Genesis to Revelation.
2 Peter 1 and verse 21.
Begin in verse 20.
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture
is of any private interpretation.
For prophecy never came by the will of
man, but holy men of God spoke as
they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
Now, generally, we understand verse 20 to say
that no man has a right to his
own private interpretation of the scriptures, but that's
really not what it's speaking about.
Verses 20 and 21 are telling how the
Bible came to us.
It has to do with the origin of
the Bible, not with our interpretation of it
after we get it.
And what verse 20 is saying, and 21
too, is that Isaiah didn't serve as a
Dan Rather, giving his own private interpretation of
current events or of future events either.
That isn't the way he wrote.
Holy men of God spoke as they were
moved by the Holy Spirit.
That has to do with the origin of
the scriptures.
They did not write it down the way
they thought it should be written down.
They wrote it down the way the Holy
Spirit gave them to write it down.
Read it in that connection.
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture
is of any private interpretation.
This has to do with the men who
wrote it.
It was not their private interpretation of how
it should be written.
Prophecy never came by the will of men,
but holy men of God spoke as they
were moved by the Holy Spirit of God.
So, we believe the entire Bible is inspired
not just in matter of faith and morals,
but in everything.
It is the Word of God, and it's
foolish to speak about degrees of inspiration.
It's all totally inspired by the Lord.
Now, there are things in the Bible that
are difficult, aren't there?
B.
H.
Carroll said that when he was a young
man, he found a thousand difficulties in the
Bible, a thousand contradictions in the Bible.
He said over the years, he had gained
the answer to 994 of those contradictions.
And he said, I think if I just
had a little more sense, I could get
the answer to the other six.
And that's right.
That's right.
He thought there were a thousand contradictions in
the Bible, but he kept studying it, and
he found that wasn't the case at all,
that if he had a little more sense,
he could find the rest.
Some people speak of the Bible today as
being authoritative.
I personally don't like that word.
I don't like to hear people say, I
believe in the authority of the Scriptures.
I like to hear them say, I believe
in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures.
You know why?
Because I believe in the authority of the
Constitution of the United States, but I don't
think it's inspired.
There's a difference, isn't there?
There's a difference between authority and inspiration, but
that's a word that's bandied around a great
deal today.
Well, people say, McDonnell, then you believe in
mechanical dictation.
You believe that God controls the men in
what they...
I certainly do.
Well, they say that's mechanical dictation.
Oh, I don't object to mechanical dictation.
People, here's a man, and he has a
secretary, and has a very important letter to
write, and he dictates the letter to the
secretary.
He wants it the way he dictated it.
He doesn't want her to rewrite it the
way she thinks it should be.
But the wonderful thing is that in giving
the Scriptures, God somehow took into account the
personalities and the styles of the individual writers.
Oh, I don't know how he did that,
but he did it.
For instance, there is a distinctive Pauline style.
You can read Paul, you say, yeah, that's
Paul.
There's a distinctive Peter style, and God somehow
took these things into account when he conveyed
the Scriptures to us.
Somebody says, yeah, but McDonnell, you say that
inspiration applies to the original manuscript.
That's right.
I believe that the words that's originally given
were inspired of God.
They were the very words of God.
You say, well, we don't have the originals
today.
What about the Bible that you're holding in
your hand today?
No great difficulty.
First of all, the Old Testament Scriptures was
accepted by the Lord Jesus as the Word
of God.
He quoted the Old Testament Scriptures as the
Word of God.
That's good enough for me.
But that isn't the whole story either.
When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, and
especially the Book of Isaiah, everyone was holding
his breath.
Do we really have the real Book of
Isaiah?
Are the Dead Sea Scrolls going to disprove
the Bible that we have?
And so the textual critics went to work,
and they studied that scroll, the Dead Sea
Scroll, which is now in Israel in the
Shrine of the Book.
One of the men working on the Revised
Standard Version of the Bible, it was a
Jew, non-believer, same as Harry Orlinsky, and
he studied the entire Book of Isaiah, and
he studied Isaiah as it was given in
the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And he suggested 13 word changes.
Now listen, 66 chapters.
Sixty-six chapters of the Book of Isaiah,
and he suggested 13 word changes.
And those word changes were not very important.
They had to do with something like this.
The difference in spelling, this is an illustration
of what they would be, the difference in
spelling between the British and the Americans.
The British spell judgment J-U-D-G
-E-M-E-N-T.
There's an E in there.
The Americans spell it J-U-D-G
-M-E-N-T.
Now that was the type of difference.
Thirteen words in the entire Book of Isaiah,
and the changes were more spelling changes than
anything else.
And after years of study, he said, I
feel I have been hasty in ten of
those changes.
Now what do you think of that?
You say, what about the New Testament?
There are so many manuscripts of the New
Testament that textual critics today, people who go
and study it intensively, feel that they have
achieved more than 99.9% purity of
the text.
Well, that's better than ivory soaps, isn't it?
I said more than 99.9% purity
of the text.
What does that mean?
It means that I can stand before you
this morning and hold this Bible up and
say, this is the Word of God.
And I do.
I say that without hesitation.
People say, yeah, but what version is the
Word of God?
I don't have any trouble with that.
Any reputable version presents the Word of God.
Do you know the Lord Jesus used a
version of the Bible when he was on
Earth, didn't he?
That settles the version question for me.
He didn't have the original of the New
Testament.
He used a version of the Old Testament
scriptures.
And if he used a version, I can
use a reputable version of the Bible.
Now that wouldn't include the Jehovah's Witness version,
would it?
Where they have to twist and turn the
scriptures to prove their false doctrines.
They have to do that.
They could never use this Bible that we're
using and disprove the deity of Christ.
No great problem.
No great problems at all.
But I thank God today that we have
the Word of God and we can preach
it and see its power in men's lives.
No one who has ever felt the force
of it is likely to deny the source
of it.
And I'll tell you, no book has ever
worked in my life like the Bible.
No book has ever exposed me to myself
like the Bible.
It showed me my need of a savior
and pointed me to the Christ of Calvary.
When you say, how can you prove that
the Bible is the Word of God?
Well, actually there are many proofs that the
Bible is the Word of God.
But I don't believe it today because somebody
proved it to be the Word of God.
I accepted the Bible by faith that God
showed me that it was the Word.
Some years ago, many years ago, Billy Graham
was down in Southern California.
He was a young man and he was
at the Forest Home Conference there.
And he had been listening to some of
the doubts and denials concerning the scriptures that
were being peddled in certain seminaries.
He'd been listening to them.
And he was being shaken by them.
And he went up on the hill, the
mountain above the conference center, and he was
having a duel with God about the scriptures.
His face was shaken.
And he wrestled with the Lord up there
about the inspiration of the scriptures.
But you know, finally it came to him
and he got down on his knees and
he says, Lord, I accept your word by
faith.
And right after that was the great Los
Angeles crusade where Billy Graham went forth.
And for the first time, he began to
say the Bible says.
And he said that there was a new
authority in his message that had never been
there before.
That was the beginning of the great ministry.
He accepted it by, this is God's order.
Believe and then you'll see.
Man doesn't like that.
Man wants to see and then believe.
God says you believe and then you'll see.
You accept the Bible by faith and then
you'll see that it is indeed the word
of God.
Jesus said to Martha, said I not unto
thee that if thou is believed, thou shouldest
see the glory of God.
You believe first Martha and you'll see.
First John 5, 13, these things have I
written unto you that believe that you may
know that you have eternal life.
You believe first and then you'll know.
Well, the Lord Jesus was hanging on the
cross.
He said come down from the cross that
we may see and believe, right?
That's man's way that we may see and
believe.
I believe because he didn't come down from
the cross.
And you find this a divine principle and
it applies to the word of God as
well.
I think Christian evidences are good.
Proofs of the Bible are good for those
who are already believers.
But when I come to people who are
unsafe, I just present the word of God
to them.
But let the word of God take root
in their lives.
When I was in college one day, we
were, I was out with the National Youth
Administration trying to earn a little money.
We were painting cyclone fences, so vivid in
my mind.
And the fellow next to me was a
seminarian.
It was a universalist seminary.
They didn't believe anything.
And I was witnessing to him in my
own poor feeble way.
And every time I'd quote the scripture to
him, he'd say, you don't have to quote
that book to me.
He said, I don't believe the Bible.
He was going to become a minister in
the universalist church.
And I became thoroughly frustrated.
Every time I'd quote the Bible, he'd say
to me, don't quote the Bible to me.
You're wasting your time.
I don't believe the Bible.
Well, I went home that night and we
had a guest in our home that night.
It was Dr. Ironside.
And when there was a lull in the
conversation, which there wasn't usually, I jumped in
and I said, I told him about my
incident.
I said, Dr. Ironside, what do you do
when you're witnessing to somebody and they say,
and you're quoting the Bible and they say
they don't believe in the Bible.
And he looked at me with a merry
twinkle in his eye and he said, I
just quote more of it.
And you know, that was a good lesson
to me.
Sure, you're dueling with somebody and he says
to you, I don't believe that sword is
steel.
What do you do?
Give him another jab with it.
And that's true of the word of God
too.
It's the word of God that has power.
Not our words.
Our words don't have power, but the word
of God has power.
No wonder he kept saying, I don't believe
it.
He was feeling the force of it in
his life, wasn't he?
Very important to see that.
But you know, what I want to emphasize
this morning too, is that it's possible to
be very orthodox concerning the scriptures, to believe
in those verbal plenary inspiration of the scriptures.
And yet, when we come to a scripture
we don't like, we can explain it away.
And I think that's a serious thing.
And yet I feel we do it.
We're something like Saul.
Saul in the Old Testament, remember, he banned
witches from the kingdom.
Not going to be any witches in my
kingdom, you know.
But what did he do?
Well, he wanted to consult a witch.
And so we have 60 theological ways in
which we can get around the clear meaning
of the word of God.
And let me give you some of them.
Number one, it couldn't mean that literally.
Hmm?
Ever hear that?
When we come to the stern teachings of
the Lord Jesus, you know, and they really
come home to us, we say, well, it
couldn't mean that literally.
You know, I think that's especially true when
it comes to a person's wallet.
The most sensitive part of modern man's anatomy
is his wallet.
And one of the problems that the Holy
Spirit has is to sever the nerve between
a man's brain and his wallet.
Now, that's not good anatomy, but it's true
just the same.
And we say that, we say, well, it
couldn't mean that literally.
But it does mean that literally.
It means the same in the Greek as
it means in the English, and vice versa.
If you can read the teachings of the
Lord Jesus and be comfortable, you're not getting
the point.
They were never intended to make us comfortable.
The Lord Jesus knew what he was teaching,
and he knew the world would never be
evangelized in any other way.
And it isn't evangelized today because we explain
away the scriptures.
We say they don't mean what they say.
Here's another one.
We've never done it that way.
We come to the scriptures, we read what
they say, we say, yes, but we've never
done it that way.
Mark chapter 7.
This is the tradition, the argument of tradition.
Mark chapter 7.
Verse 9.
Yes, he said to them, all too well
you reject the commandment of God that you
may keep your tradition.
But Moses said, honor your father and your
mother.
And he who curses father and mother, let
him be put to death.
But you say, if a man says to
his father or mother, whatever profit you might
have received from me is Corban.
That is dedicated to the temple.
And you no longer let him do anything
for his father or his mother, making the
word of God of no effect through your
tradition, which you have handed down, and many
such things you do.
See, they had developed this cute way in
the Jewish economy.
Here's a father and he doesn't have social
security.
He doesn't have SSI.
He has no means of support.
And he goes to his son and he
says, son, I need your help.
And the son said to him, look dad,
anything that I might have been able to
give to you has been dedicated to the
Lord.
It doesn't mean the Lord got it.
It doesn't mean that the temple ever saw
it.
It just means it was dedicated to the
Lord.
And he got around his obligation by that
traditional argument.
The argument of tradition.
We were talking at the breakfast table that
in Israel, sometimes the Jews still do that.
You know, the law says, let your land
lie fallow in the seventh year.
So on the seventh year, they take the
land, their land, and they put it in
the name of an Arab nominee.
He better not try to get his hands
on it.
That Arab.
It's just a legal device.
They put it in the name of an
Arab nominee, and then they go ahead and
cultivate it.
And they're not breaking the law because it's
not their land.
As I say, he better not try to
get it.
It's a device to get around the scriptures.
We do that.
We've never done it that way.
Here's a third way we get around the
inspiration of the scriptures.
I know that's what the Bible says, but
God wants to make an exception in my
life.
You see, nobody would say it.
They say it all the time.
A pretty young girl, and she falls in
love, a Christian girl, and she falls in
love with an unsaved fellow.
And you say, look, you can't marry that
fellow.
He's unsaved.
You say you're a Christian, and he's an
unbeliever.
And the scripture says, don't be unequally yoked
together with unbelievers.
She said, I know that's what the Bible
says.
She says, in my case, God wants to
make an exception so I can marry him
and lead him to Christ.
So much for the scriptures.
Make me think of the poet Ruskin.
He was an unsaved man.
He fell in love with a Christian girl.
And he proposed to her.
And she said to him, do you love
me more than you love Jesus Christ?
He said, I'd have to say that I
do.
Well, she said, I couldn't marry you.
And you know, that girl was stricken with
tuberculosis.
She was in bed.
And even after that, Ruskin came one day,
and he wanted to see her.
And she sent out a message to him.
And she said, you still love me more
than you love Jesus Christ.
And he sent back word in that he
did.
And she said, no good would come from
an interview.
She didn't try to get around the scriptures,
did she?
She accepted them the way they are and
let it go at that.
Here's a cultural argument.
That was just for Paul's day.
And this is very common today.
You say, well, thank God it's not in
the assembly.
It is in the assembly.
But we're so moved by the change in
culture, for instance, the feminist movement, that anything
we come to that violates the feminist movement,
we say, well, those verses were just for
Paul's day.
Watch out.
Listen, if you can explain away the scriptures
on a cultural basis, you can get rid
of baptism.
You can get rid of the Lord's Supper.
You can get rid of anything you want.
Just say it was for the culture of
that day.
Number five, God knows I have to live,
doesn't he?
I mean, the Bible speaks explicitly, clearly.
We know what it says.
And we say, well, God knows I have
to live.
A young man said that to Spurgeon once
when Spurgeon was pressing upon him the stern
demands of Christ.
Tell us that God knows I have to
live, doesn't he?
Spurgeon said, I don't admit that.
We have to obey God.
But that's right.
We don't have to live.
Where does it say we have to live?
We have to obey God and leave the
consequences with him.
Number six, but you have to be prudent,
don't you?
You have to use common sense.
Well, I tell you, there's something better than
common sense, and that's divine revelation.
And divine revelation is higher than common sense.
Common sense is fallible, isn't it?
Prudence is fallible.
I often tell the story of praying with
a group of OMers in Belgium years ago.
Ray Lynch was praying, and he told the
Lord that the oftentimes of the things of
God, common sense is no better than rat
poison.
Is that true too?
That's true.
He made his point.
Number seven, these scriptures reveal Paul's prejudices.
Paul was a male chauvinist.
Well, listen, if that's true, you might as
well get rid of your Bible.
If you can't trust those portions of, who's
to say where error begins and ends?
When you want to admit error in the
Bible, when you want to admit prejudice in
the Bible, who's to say where it begins
and where it ends?
That's the problem that some of these critics
of the Bible have to deal with.
Daniel Fuller of Fuller Seminary says, we know
the Bible contains error.
Imagine, because the Bible, Jesus said the mustard
seed was the smallest of all seeds.
We know the mustard seed is not the
smallest of all seeds.
Therefore, the Bible contains error.
If Daniel Fuller is right, then not only
the Bible contains error, but we have a
fallible savior.
Jesus wasn't given a scientific discourse on the
size of seeds.
He was speaking in the context of the
days in which the people lived in the
woman's pantry.
And as she looked into her pantry, doubtless,
mustard seeds were the smallest of all seeds,
in the context of her life.
I tell you, they're pretty hard, hard up
for arguments when they see something like that,
aren't they?
Number eight, you wouldn't want to do it
if it would offend somebody, would you?
I was speaking down in Fullerton not too
long ago, and I was pressing a certain
portion of the Word of God.
A girl came up to me afterwards, and
she said, well, you wouldn't do it if
it would offend somebody.
I said, of course I do it.
My conscience is captive to the Word of
God, as Martin Luther said.
But that's where we have to stand, isn't
it?
My conscience is captive to the Word of
God.
The consequences belong to the Lord.
Here's a good one.
Well, those scriptures are all right for a
bachelor, but they wouldn't do for a man
with six kids.
What kind of a God do you have?
Imagine a God who can take care of
a bachelor better than he can take care
of a family of eight.
Really, the weakness of these arguments that are
brought against the scriptures.
Another argument, these teachings are for the kingdom.
Actually, I was brought up in that type
of teaching, that if there were some teachings
that were rather difficult, we'd put them in
a kingdom pigeonhole, you know?
You can get rid of a lot of
them.
That's what the ultra-dispensationalists do.
When the ultra-dispensationalists get through with the
New Testament, all you have left is the
prison epistles.
I'm serious.
Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.
Anything else they can say, that's the kingdom.
We all have that discourse, the kingdom.
The Sermon on the Mount has nothing to
do with us, it ain't.
It's terrible, really, what we can do with
the scriptures.
It's terrible how family can influence us in
our treatment of the scriptures.
How friends can influence us.
How money can influence us.
How even a job can influence us.
How people can soft-pedal the Word of
God because of some of these things.
The other day, I was reading an article
by John Whitcomb.
He was reviewing a book by E.
J.
Carnell.
The book was called The Case for Orthodox
Theology, but actually the book was undermining the
scriptures.
For instance, Carnell says in this book, Adam
could well have received his body from a
previously evolved ape so that Genesis could be
non-historical and non-scientific.
And John Whitcomb was debating with another man
about this book.
He criticized the book to Dr. George Eldon
Ladd.
And you know what Ladd said?
He said, well, you don't know him personally
as I do.
He's a gracious gentleman, a godly man.
See?
It's okay to undermine the scriptures as long
as you're a gracious gentleman, a godly man.
This is the way we're influenced, how men
are influenced to take sides against the scriptures
just because of friendship, or just because of
family relationships, or just because of money.
It's really amazing how men can be influenced
by the power of money.
And that's something we've got to be very
wary of in the day in which we
live.
Money is power, and power corrupts.
And our stand must be for the word
of God first, last, and always.
What is Christ's kingdom offers us?
The word of God, the Bible, inspired from
cover to cover.
And God loves the man, the woman, who
trembles at his word.
That's where we want to be.
Not trying to explain it away, not trying
to soften the force of the word of
God, but accepting it as the word, and
say, that's what it says, that's what I'm
going to do.
Shall we pray?
Father, we do thank you this morning for
this marvelous treasure that we have in our
hands and in our hearts.
Think of all that the scriptures have meant
to us, how faith came to us by
hearing the word of God.
We pray, Lord, that you'll deliver us from
all the pressures that are around us today
to soften the meaning of the scriptures, to
explain them away.
Lord, may you find among us a people
who will indeed tremble at your word, who
will accept it as your word, read it,
study it, memorize it, and most of all,
obey it.
We ask in Jesus' name, amen.