[0:00] 2 Timothy, chapter 3, again. 2 Timothy, chapter 3. I think it's got the waffles today.
[0:18] ! 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse you all know well.! Chapter 3, verse 16 and 17. It says, Today we're talking about the inspiration of Scripture.
[0:44] We've been studying Bibliology, the study of the Bible, and today we're going to be talking about, and next week, talking about the inspiration of Scripture. To be inspired to do or say something is not what we're talking about.
[1:01] You ever been inspired to, and you make statements and things, and you're just like, that's not what we're talking about. Some people, they go around thinking of ways to say things, and people remember how they say things.
[1:17] We call them inspirational sayings. Listen, that's not what he's talking about here today. You know, a lot of times, people read the Bible for that particular reason.
[1:32] The Proverbs. People will go to Proverbs, and pick a proverb out here, and a proverb out there, and they'll, you know, say, oh yeah, that's a good saying. That's a good saying. Even the unsaved world.
[1:44] You hear them sometimes, they'll come out with sayings, and you're like, that's a biblical saying. How do they know that? But to them, it's an inspirational saying or something like that. You know, but the Bible is far more than that.
[1:56] It's not just a book full of inspirational sayings. It is the inspired Word of God. It is about relationships.
[2:07] It's more than just motivational. It's about a relationship. It's about a transformation that takes place in our life. So when we read the Bible, it's not just like, well, that's my saying for today.
[2:20] No, it's a life-changing thing that we're looking at when we look at the Bible. So what's the definition of inspiration? The definition of inspiration.
[2:31] We'll look at that in just a second. Let's have a word prayer first. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for your Word. Thank you, Lord, that you have given us your inspired Word.
[2:44] You have given us the things that you want us to have, the things that you can use in our life to help us with our relationship with you, our relationship with others.
[2:55] Lord, I pray that you would just help us as we look at this, the inspiration that you gave us, the words that we have here in front of us.
[3:07] You gave us your Word. Lord, may we never take it lightly. May we always hold it in high regard because it's a gift that you have given to us and you speak to our hearts.
[3:24] You speak to our relationships. You speak to the fact that we know how to be saved because of the words that you have given to us. Lord, thank you for all that you have done.
[3:36] In Jesus' name, amen. Inspiration. Definition. As a Greek word, theopneustos. I could spell it out for you, but I'm not going to.
[3:47] Theopneustos. And it literally means the idea of inspiration. It means God breathed. God breathed. You ever have somebody say to you, they give you a secret.
[4:03] They tell you a secret and they say, now don't breathe the word of that to anybody. Anybody ever say that to you? Don't breathe them. You understand there's a relationship between the breath going out and the words that go out.
[4:15] And God says, I breathe out these words. You having trouble hearing? Okay. Hang on a second. We turned them up for a minute because it was a little stuffy.
[4:27] Okay. Yep. Yeah, she got that.
[4:41] So God breathed out these words to us. There's a relationship. You remember when God created Adam?
[4:52] What did he do? He breathed into him the breath of life. When God gives us his word, gave us his word, he breathed out something that's going to give us life.
[5:05] When we go to the word of God, why do we go there? It teaches us about salvation. Gives us life. Sometimes you're discouraged and stuff. Go to the word of God and what does it do?
[5:15] It breathes new life into you. It helps that relationship. It helps that walk with God. It is giving us the life that we need. So we go to it because God inspired it.
[5:26] You see it used there in 1 Timothy. All scripture is given by inspiration. In 2 Peter 1.21, Peter uses the same idea.
[5:44] He says, For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, the holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
[5:57] The Holy Ghost spoke to them. The Holy Spirit spoke to them and gave them the words they needed to hear. So when we speak of the doctrine of inspiration, what we're saying is that God gave us the very words that he wanted us to have.
[6:13] He breathed them out. They came directly from him. Scriptures can be inspiring, but we're talking about the fact that God breathed them.
[6:30] God gave them. God said them. It is not just the, again, motivational things of scripture. It is the source of our life that we have in God.
[6:43] Charles Ryrie, some of you have heard of him. He was a teacher at Dallas Theological Seminary. He was. I don't know if he still is or not.
[6:54] But he, this is what he defined inspiration. He said, inspiration is God's superintendence of human authors so that using their own individual personalities, they compose and record without error his revelation to man in the words of the original autographs.
[7:20] Okay, let me read that to you again and then we'll kind of break that down a little bit. God's superintendence of human authors so that using their own individual personalities, they composed and record without error his revelation to man in the words of the original autographs.
[7:42] Now what does that mean? What Ryrie is saying is that God gave us the word of God. You remember how many times, matter of fact, I'll mention this in a minute, but how many times do you see the words thus saith the Lord?
[8:00] God gave it to them and they're saying, okay, here's what God said and I'm going to give you what God said. And so, they're doing that. So the superintendents of the human authors using their own individual personalities, when you read different books, you can tell different authors are doing them.
[8:18] There's a difference between the way Paul writes and the way James writes or the way Peter writes. God used them just as they were. And he recorded it, it says, in the original autographs.
[8:30] So when they wrote them down, they were God's gift to us and they were God's exact words. When they wrote them down, they were doing that.
[8:41] Okay? So, that's the definition of inspiration. So let's give an explanation of inspiration now. We kind of touched on this one already.
[8:53] Scriptures of God breathed. God gave them to us. You ever, I mentioned that, you know, don't breathe a word of this and stuff. But if you're the typical person, you do breathe a word of it, don't you?
[9:10] I've got good gossip. Oh, who can I share this with? So you go and share it with somebody. And their response is, who told you that? Who told you that?
[9:22] What's the authority behind what you just told me? How do you know that? You know, see, the scriptures are given to us so that we might know the authority behind them.
[9:39] The way God gave them to those men, again, they come out and they go, thus saith the Lord. The inspiration of scripture is always putting back onto who the author is.
[9:52] It is God. God is the one who wrote it. We say, Paul wrote this and Peter wrote that and Titus wrote this and Timothy and no, God wrote it.
[10:04] They put down the words, but God gave them to them. Again, all scripture is given by inspiration of God.
[10:15] And in 1 Peter, 1 Peter, again, actually, I'm going to back up to verse 20. 1 Peter 1.20, Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
[10:32] For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. What do you learn from these two passages of scripture? What do you learn about what the scripture is not?
[10:49] The scripture is not man's thoughts. It is not man's imagination. It is not man's reasoning. It is not man's, anything to do with man. The scripture is given by inspiration of God.
[11:01] Okay? So what do you learn from these passages of scripture is? It is given to us directly by God, communicated by the Holy Spirit to individuals who wrote it down.
[11:16] And since God is the author of the Bible, we should expect it to reflect his character. We should expect it to reflect his ways. We should expect it to be without error.
[11:29] The Bible is not from human ingenuity. It is a gift from God. If it were man's ideas, what would happen?
[11:46] It would be a mess. It would be tainted because man has a sinful nature. Man has a sinful spirit. We are born with a sinful nature. So if it is not from man, how do we know that?
[11:59] Okay. I was thinking you were going to ask a question. Okay. If man had done it, it would be tainted.
[12:11] Where was I going with that? Well, if man had done it, there wouldn't be any sense to go out of scripture looking for a confirmation of what was said in that scripture there because there's no way they're going to be able to put it together and have it come out so that there's an agreement with all the things that there is in the Bible because it just couldn't happen.
[12:38] Okay. And that's where I was going. It was going to be the fact that, no, that was good because it reminded me. That's where I was going to go because it reminds us that the Bible does not contradict itself.
[12:51] If you have 40 authors over 1,600 years and it's not directed by the Holy Spirit, God giving the words, there's going to be contradictions.
[13:02] There's going to be things that don't agree. There's going to be things that don't line up. Yep, that's true. Some people, you know, if I was to write a book of the Bible, I'd be like Mark, you know, because I'm usually very concise in my words and stuff.
[13:21] To get up here in front of you and preach a message and stuff and fill a half hour is usually not my style. I'm usually a, let's get to the point first. Other people, though, yes, and you know how they like to just, they'll go and they'll go and they'll go and they'll go and yeah, their book's this big, mine's this big.
[13:42] So, yeah, but they'd be contradictory too because man's sin would taint it. I mentioned the thus saith the Lord over 2,000 times in the Old Testament.
[13:56] Thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord. They're giving God's words of truth to his people. It reflects the fact that he is in control, he is the authority that we go to.
[14:12] Second, the scriptures had human writers, human writers. As I mentioned, read one of Paul's letters and then read James or Peter or somebody else.
[14:23] You can tell there's a difference in their styles of writing. You know, Paul wrote this, James wrote this, Peter wrote this, but they're all equally inspired by God.
[14:39] They all have the same authority. You know, we look at Paul and we look at all the things he wrote and say, whoa, Paul is something special. And he was. But, he was no more special than James.
[14:53] He was no more special than Peter. He was, they all had the same authority behind them, the same source for the writings that they did.
[15:04] They all came from the Holy Spirit. Now, here's a question for you to think about for a minute. How does the fact that human writers put their personalities into the scriptures affect your trust?
[15:20] of the scripture? And the accuracy of it? The fact that their personalities come through. Okay.
[15:34] Huh? Okay. Personalities change and stuff. Okay. Fred? Human mentality, human behavior has not changed to any great extent since the Bible was written.
[15:56] Not a sentence, but actually the book was written, which were a thousand years before they would ever compile. Point being, why is man in himself hasn't changed?
[16:13] Why haven't we had more words being printed since Jesus time? I mean, we've had the words that were said then, why have we not had additions put in yet?
[16:29] Okay. We'll get to that. Other than they haven't, man himself has not changed in his ambitions. We'll get to that. I'll answer that in future.
[16:42] Okay. But part of the fact that you just said, man hasn't changed. So we have different personalities. We still have different personalities today. And so we're writing, he's having the people who write them so that we understand because we have those same type of personalities.
[17:00] Yeah. Constitution has a lot of amendments. The Bible doesn't. And it was written by men. Yep. But not inspired by God like the Bible does.
[17:15] Let me ask you this. Those different writers who have the different personalities, who gave them the personality? So God gave them the personality.
[17:28] God says, I want you to write this down. God's using who they are. God can use us. Every one of us, no matter who we are.
[17:39] We have different personalities. We have different traits. We have things. God can use us in the things that we do. Recognizing those different personalities that people had doesn't diminish the fact that God gave them the words.
[17:57] God knows them. God knows their heart. He knows how they think. So he gives them things. They're not robots. The human authors were not robots. Okay, Mr.
[18:10] stenographer, you're going to write this this way. No. God says, here's what I want you to say. And they said it. But God knew who they were.
[18:21] And God used who they were. God can use us in so many ways if we will just allow him to do it. The Holy Spirit is still the source of it all.
[18:42] Covered different things while I was making those statements, so let's see what's going on. Peter gave us a foundation. Again, back in 2 Peter. Might as well go there for a second.
[18:55] 2 Peter chapter 1. 2 Peter chapter 1, again, verse 20 and 21.
[19:09] Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
[19:25] No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. That is so important to remember. we don't get to say, I think the Scripture means this, I think the Scripture means that.
[19:45] He says it's not a private interpretation. We take the Bible and we compare it to the Bible. That's like people who take the one verse in Acts chapter 2 and say you have to be baptized in order to be saved.
[20:01] Have you read the rest of the Bible? Baptism does not save you. Jesus Christ saved you. And you take other parts of the Bible and say okay.
[20:14] You take one verse out of context versus all of these verses in context and you say no that's not how it works. He says it's not of any private interpretation.
[20:24] We compare the Bible to the Bible. What does it say? And it's not just a compilation of sayings by wise men.
[20:36] It is the word of God. Notice how he starts off. Oh, Margaret. Well, the writers of the Bible all had personal earth-shattering relationships with God and Jesus.
[20:52] The apostles all knew him. Paul, what he saw, was blinded and spoke directly with Jesus and that when Jesus confronted him.
[21:05] And so these people should be the ones that write the Bible and write about their experiences and what God tells them that. Yep, because they had a relationship with him.
[21:17] Yeah. Yep. Notice what he says in verse 20. Knowing this first. here's the starting point.
[21:28] Know this first. It says that no prophecy of scriptures of any private interpretation. Know this first. You cannot make it up on your own.
[21:39] You cannot just say, okay, I read this and this is what I think it means. Now, we do Bible studies that way sometimes. We look and we talk to one another and we say, oh, I think it means this.
[21:50] But we better be backing it up with scripture. I think it means this because it says this over here and it says this here and it says this over here and they all point to the same thing.
[22:03] Using the Bible to back up the Bible. The Holy Spirit arranged for the writing and the Holy Spirit gave the words and said there in verse 21, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
[22:18] Moved by the Holy Ghost. That word moved there is used one other time. And it's used in Acts when Paul's telling about his being out on the sea in the ship.
[22:31] And a storm came up and the ship was driven. The wind was setting the direction it was going. The wind was going to tell you what your destination was going to be.
[22:44] That's the same word in Paul's. Peter says the Holy Spirit is the wind in your sails. It was the wind in the writer's sails. It was the one that determined where they were going to go with what they were writing and what they were being given and the way they were going to put it down.
[23:00] So we need to remember that it wasn't the men. It was the Holy Spirit that was the source behind what they were doing and what they were writing. You know, again, they're having their own personalities.
[23:13] During the storm, people could move around on the boat, right? The boat's being driven. It's going that way because that's the way the wind's going. But the people on the boat could move around. Remember in the storm on the Sea of Galilee?
[23:26] Jesus was asleep. And then they woke him up. He came up on deck and he said, peace be still. But he moved around.
[23:38] Did you get him? Okay. Got to make noise. Better get him. So, you know, you can move around. So that's what it means by using their personalities.
[23:52] They could move around a little bit and stuff and things, but the words that they were given were the words that they were going to give out. Okay. Letter C. The scriptures are God's word to humanity.
[24:06] God's word to humanity. See, a lot of people look at the Bible and they read the Bible, like I said, for motivational ideas, for inspirational ideas, and things like that.
[24:18] like that. It is not a book of abstract ideas. The Bible is a book about a relationship between us and God.
[24:30] How am I supposed to live for God? How is God going to talk to me? What does God want me to do? How does God foresee my future? What is he, you know, it's all about the relationship with him.
[24:43] And God giving us through the Bible his relationship with mankind from the very beginning. back in Genesis he begins with the creation of man and goes right through and shows us his relationship with people all throughout.
[24:56] You know, there's a lot of questions in the Bible that don't get answered. You know, let me reword that. There's a lot of questions that the Bible doesn't address.
[25:11] You can think of questions that the Bible doesn't answer. we all know what an atom is, right?
[25:24] Atoms make up you. Atoms make up the pew. Atoms make up this disk. We know what atoms are. Let me ask you this. What makes up an atom?
[25:40] Quirks and other things that people talk about. Yep. Yep. We want to know who made God. Yeah. So there's a lot of questions that people that we have that the Bible doesn't answer.
[25:57] Medical questions. We got a lot of people who have different issues medically and we'd like to know the answer. Angela's got these things popping out on her and she's, you watch her thumb and other things and she's, why are these doing this?
[26:11] Where is it coming from? What's happening and stuff? Why are these? The Bible doesn't give us all of those answers. The Bible gives us answers to the things that we need to know.
[26:25] Well, I think I need to know that. I think I know what you need to know is how I can be reconciled to God, how I can be redeemed so that I have that opportunity to spend eternity with him and go to heaven.
[26:37] That's what the Bible is all about. How do we answer? The question of getting in relationship with God again because sin has taken us in a different direction.
[26:51] See, the Bible addresses the greatest needs. Do I really, does it really matter to me what an atom is made of? No. Why do I care?
[27:04] But how do I, how can I be reconciled to God? That one, I need to know for all eternity. You're there in 2 Peter, come back to chapter 1.
[27:19] Look at verse, Charlotte's. Go back to chapter, 2 Peter 1, beginning at verse 2. Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of our Lord Jesus, and of Jesus our Lord.
[27:35] According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. It doesn't say he's given us all things about everything, but it's given us everything we need to life and godliness.
[27:48] Everything we need to know how to have eternal life with God and to be godly as we live this world. And it says, and through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.
[28:00] virtue, God has a plan for us. And he's given us a way to get there where we have glory and virtue. Verse 4. Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
[28:18] He says he's given us great and precious promises so that we can be partakers of his nature, his divine nature. So God has given us the things that we need to have.
[28:31] God has given us the things that we need to take in and make a part of our life. All we need in life is to be pleasing to God.
[28:50] And we know how to do that because the word of God tells us. You know, sometimes we don't always understand how to live it out, but God will give it to us.
[29:01] James 1, verse 5. James 1, 5. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God to give it to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.
[29:14] You lack wisdom, what do you do? Ask God. God, I don't understand this passage. I'm reading it and I don't get it. How do you understand? Ask God. I don't get, ask God.
[29:28] He says he gives all men liberally. So God's inspired word is so that we can know him. So God has given us his word and he's given it so that we can have a relationship with him and so that we can understand what he wants us to do.
[29:47] So what I need to do every day, I need to take my Bible, put it under my arm and walk around with it and I get it by osmosis.
[29:59] Nope. That would be so much easier, wouldn't it? I just carry it around with me everywhere and I got it. No. Huh?
[30:09] We'd be sure we all got it, yeah. But we have to open it. We have to open it up and look at it and read it, study it. God's given a message to us and he says, look, you want to please me?
[30:23] Look at the book. You want to know how you can be saved? Look at the book. You want to know how you should live your life? Look at the book. I've given you the instruction manual. I've given you everything you need.
[30:35] Look at it, study it, make it part of yourself. And we'll talk some more about inspiration next week. Good. I have enough dates from Dorothy. Okay.