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[0:00] And look with me beginning at verse 7.

[0:19] ! Psalm 19 beginning at verse 7.! And it says this, The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

[0:32] The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

[0:43] The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yet in much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward.

[1:01] Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this time to be together this morning, Lord.

[1:13] We thank you for a chance to look at your word. And as we've been doing this study on understanding your word more, Lord, I pray that you would help us understand some things about it. Lord, we've talked about it being inspired.

[1:25] God breathed. God gave us every word that we have here by the Holy Spirit. Gave it to men that they might write it down so that we could have it. And, Lord, today as we look at further things about God's word, Lord, just help us to understand what you have given to us.

[1:42] You've truly given us a blessed book. Truly given us something of great value. And, Lord, may we treasure what you have given to us. Lord, thank you for this time together.

[1:53] In Jesus' name. Amen. So this morning, you can see up there, inerrancy and infallibility. Two big words. We're going to talk about what they mean and how they affect things of what we consider the authority for the Bible and what we consider to be the foundation of the Bible.

[2:15] And probably the easiest thing to do is start off with definitions. Before I do that, though, come back to Psalm 19 here for a second. I was thinking about this.

[2:26] Look at what it says there. Again, the law of the Lord, the testimony of the Lord, the statutes of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, the judgments of the Lord, all of those different things, what are they talking about?

[2:49] Every one of those things he's referring to the Word of God. When you have the Word of God in your life, think about it for a second. When you have the law of the Lord, it's perfect, converting the soul.

[3:03] How do we know how to get saved? By the Word of God and what it tells us. He says, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. You know, the funny thing about the Word of God, some people are like, oh, it's too hard to understand.

[3:18] He says it's here and it makes wise the simple. My dad had an eighth grade education. And yet my dad knew the Word of God, studied it, taught it, and he wound up being on the board for the Baskerville Valley Federal Credit Union.

[3:41] He wound up being on the board of CEF, you know, with Addy's part of it. So he had an eighth grade education, but the Word of the Lord made wise the simple. He had such wisdom.

[3:53] He was a great, great dad. The statutes of the Lord are right. You want to know what the right thing is to do? Go to the Word of God. That rejoices the heart.

[4:03] The commandments of the Lord are pure. Why did God give us these commandments? To help keep us pure, keep us where we should be, keep us on the right path. So all of these different things, he's referring to the Word of God.

[4:15] And now today we're looking at these two words, inerrancy and infallibility. And they are so important that we understand these words because they have a lot to do with the faith that we have in the Word of God.

[4:28] And it has a lot to do with how we practice the Word of God and how we live out the Word of God. So let's look at these definitions. First of all, inerrancy. Inerrancy comes from a Latin word, which is going to be strange to you.

[4:43] A Latin word that means to wander. Think about that for a second. It comes from a Latin word that means to wander. Now, so it means, you know, to depart, to wander, to go.

[4:56] And why would we have that as a word to mean something important about the Word of God? Well, because it has that little beginning to it. Inerrancy.

[5:07] And in Latin, in is a negative. So he's saying, you take the Word of God, you're not going to wander. You're not going to go different directions. You're not going to leave the truth.

[5:19] Right? You said to wander. That's got something to do with every time I go to a sermon, I can't follow my mind. It goes elsewhere.

[5:30] Your mind is wandering. I did what I wanted. Yep, your mind is wandering, yes. He says, when you come to the Word of God, though, he said, it is inerrant. It is not going to wander.

[5:43] It stays with the truth. You want to know what the truth is? Go to the Word of God. Margaret? Were they talking about that the Word of God doesn't wander? It says, well, if that's the word you can do it?

[5:55] Exactly. Or is it that it's not going to wander from you? It's not going to wander from you once you learn it? It's not going to wander from the truth. So if you want to know what truth is, you want to know what God wants you to do, go to the Word of God, because it's not going to wander.

[6:12] It is going to be giving you the right drink. Can I leave out the Word of Job then? Do what? Can you leave out the Word of Job then? Then, because we've been trying to read that through from one end to the other?

[6:26] And it makes your mind warm up to what you're talking about. Actually, no, and I'm going to talk about Job somewhere during this, so we'll mention Job and what things God did there.

[6:37] So we're not going to wander from the truth. We're going to do what God wants us to do. We're going to follow what he wants. And then you make it even fuller because we talk about the fact of biblical inerrancy.

[6:49] Biblical. The Bible is not going to wander from the truth, which means that it is free from error. You go to the Word of God, you go to the Bible, there is no error in it.

[7:01] When it comes to addressing things like doctrine and ethics and history and all those things, you can count on it. It is true. It is going to give you everything you need.

[7:15] Example, a large portion of Job records his friends giving all of their opinions about things.

[7:28] He gives those speeches that they gave, even though they were wrong in what they were advising him. He says, look, the Word of God is giving you the truth.

[7:41] This is what they said. It's not endorsing what they said, but it is saying this is what was actually said during these things, during this time. So it's not giving you false information.

[7:54] It's giving you true information, even though what the people may be saying is not true. He's giving you a true representation of what happened and what took place there. So that term inerrancy, you can go there and it's the truth.

[8:09] Now, we've looked at the verse in 2 Timothy 3.16. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. Okay? There's no verse in the Bible that says all scripture is inerrant.

[8:20] There's no verse in there that says that. But think about it for a second. Isn't that a logical conclusion that if all scripture is given by inspiration of God, then all scripture is free from error and it is inerrant?

[8:37] If we said that the Bible is inspired by God and then said it's full of errors and false claims, what would that tell us about God?

[8:54] He's more human than what we thought. Okay. Yeah. You know, God doesn't care if it's completely true. Except there's other verses we'll look at shortly that says God cannot lie.

[9:10] So, therefore, it has to be truth because God cannot lie. God is, we're saying God's not capable of giving truthful scripture.

[9:22] You know, he can't, he couldn't do it in a way that's not, doesn't have error and stuff in it. No, God can do that. God is less than perfect.

[9:33] No. That doesn't work either. So, Titus chapter 2, verse 1. You don't have to turn to these. Let me just read them to you. But Titus chapter 2, verse 1, chapter 1, verse 2.

[9:45] Titus 1, 2. In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began. God said, before the world began, I promised you certain promises.

[9:58] And I'm giving you those promises. I'm helping you to understand those promises. Ooh, one of our wasps is back. Okay. Jared. Got your fly swatter? I need my phone.

[10:11] I need my phone. Here. I'm going to go. He's got a fly swatter. You don't need more. Nah, don't mess up your phone. He got a fly swatter back there.

[10:22] Two of them. Two of them? I think that's the big one. I mean, I always call him Fred. Really? I thought they would be done by now, but apparently not.

[10:33] Still warm enough up there. Warm enough? No. Well, you're going to have to wait a minute. He moved. I'll be ready for him.

[10:44] You're ready for him. Okay. God cares about what we have in front of us. He cares about what we have to read.

[10:55] He wants us to understand and to know him. Proverbs 30, verse 5 says this. Every word of God is pure. Every word of God. Did you get him?

[11:06] All right. Every word of God is pure. Okay? Every word of God is pure. Okay? What does that mean? When we say every word of God is pure? When you have gold or silver, they bring it to a boil.

[11:22] They warm it up and bring it to a boil to purify it. Because the stuff that's impure floats to the top. And they can just skim it off. And so anything that when they're refining those two metals and stuff, they just warm them up and then skim off.

[11:38] He says the word of God is pure. It has been through the process. It has been through what God wanted to put it through. What we have in front of us is God's word, pure and simple.

[11:50] He has given it to us. How about the word infallibility? Infallibility. What does that word mean? Without fail.

[12:02] The writers, as they wrote the Bible, they did it. You know, they could have made errors and things like that, but they didn't. Why didn't they?

[12:14] God was directing them. Remember what it said in 1 Peter 1, verse 20 and 21? Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

[12:35] He used their, remember, their personalities and stuff. But yes, God was controlling what they were writing down. So that they wrote exactly what he wanted them to write. So what we're saying is it was impossible for error.

[12:49] It was impossible for them to make a mistake because they were under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as he guided them and gave them the things that they were supposed to say. So think about it.

[13:01] God inspired them to write an inerrant, infallible book. If it's not inerrant, if it's not infallible, what does that tell us about inspiration?

[13:17] See, if there's mistakes in it, if there's problems with it, then what does that tell us about who God is? So we need to make sure we understand these two words.

[13:32] Pure, without mistake, without problem. So when we come to the word of God and we study it and we take it for our lives and we want it to guide us and everything, we have to remember it is pure and no errors in it.

[13:48] Now, why is that so important? Well, it's important because, first of all, inerrancy affects the authority. Inerrancy, that fact that it's without error, it's true, it's pure, affects the authority.

[14:07] If it's not inerrant, then we have a problem. Because who among us is qualified to tell you which part is true and which part isn't?

[14:24] If we say the Bible isn't inerrant, it does have mistakes, it does have errors, which one of us is going to be the one who's qualified to say where the errors are?

[14:36] Think about that. Okay. Kathy's back there shaking her head. Kathy says, I can do it. No, you couldn't? Okay. No, none of us could do that.

[14:49] We can't go in and go, well, this is God's word and this isn't. You remember, we have to take all of this. Remember last week we were looking at Paul. And Paul, I don't remember where the verse was now, but this verse Paul used.

[15:02] And he quoted from the Old Testament and he quoted from Luke in the same verse. This is the scripture. And he says, it starts off the verse, I remember, and this is the scripture. This is Old Testament.

[15:15] This is scripture. Here's Luke and what he wrote. That's scripture. So Paul's saying the whole thing is scripture. The only authority over the word of God is God himself.

[15:28] If we take God out of the equation, we've got nothing. So we need to be careful about what we believe about inerrancy and infallibility.

[15:42] You can have all the wisest men in the world coming together and saying, oh, no, no, this isn't right. If you do that, you've just basically destroyed the whole thing. So we need to make sure we understand.

[15:55] Look at verse 12 there again. We're in Psalm 19, for those of you. Psalm 19. Look at verse 12. Who can understand his errors?

[16:06] Cleanse thou me from secret fault. What errors? Who can cleanse them? That's a rhetorical question. He's pointing out, you know, he just said to the verses 7 through 9, the word of the God is this, and the word of the God is that, and the law of the Lord is this, and the statutes of the Lord are that.

[16:24] And he's just said all these things about it. So who can know his errors? He's saying basically there aren't any. That's a rhetorical question. There is no errors in the word of God.

[16:36] God didn't give us anything that has problems with it. God only gave us the best. God only gave us the best. So if we're not qualified to make the judgment on it, why wouldn't we be qualified?

[16:54] We're all sinners. He didn't give us the word to write down. And we're all sinners. The men who wrote him were sinners, but they were under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

[17:06] And they wrote what the Holy Spirit told them. So he says, nope, don't do that. Second thing. Inerrancy and interpretation. Inerrancy and interpretation.

[17:18] If we don't believe the Bible is true completely in everything, it's going to affect the way we interpret things. Again, those verses 7 through 9, he tells us the word of God is this and this and this and this.

[17:34] If you're reading the word of God and you have doubts about what it says, what's that going to do to the interpretation of it?

[17:46] What's that going to do to how I read it and how I study it? The Bible says in John 17, 17, thy word is truth. He said you're supposed to remember it and study it as truth.

[18:01] If we take the word of God and say, well, I'm not sure this was written this way. I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure. It's going to affect the way we interpret.

[18:11] And why do we have so many different interpretations of things? Because everybody's putting their opinion in. Instead of studying it and saying, this is what God said. And if I have a question about it, I stick with the Bible and I find out what God said about it.

[18:27] In other places. The topic that I'm looking at. Use the Bible to interpret the Bible. You know, we go to a lot of commentaries and we do a lot of things.

[18:38] We look at men's opinions and they can be helpful. But the truest way of interpreting the Bible is with the Bible itself. This says this over here. I have questions.

[18:50] But it says this here and it says this here and it says this here. Okay, now I understand what this means because this is what the Bible says in other places. And this is the way I'm going to interpret this because that's what the Bible says.

[19:03] I'm going to go with that. Now, there is a debate taking place in our world today. There are those who, you know, say, no, the Bible is not inerrant.

[19:16] There are mistakes and things. And they defend their opinions and they question the scripture and they do all these different things. And they try to short circuit the Bible by saying, I believe this and I believe this and I believe this.

[19:33] Even though the Bible says, you ever heard people say that? Well, I know what the Bible says, but you've heard people say that, right? Yeah, they're trying to short circuit to pick their own opinion and their own belief in what they want.

[19:46] Instead of just saying, well, this is what the Bible says, so this is what I'm going to believe. There's some arguments for what today is called qualified inerrancy.

[19:57] Angela, you may have to jump ahead there, but there's one that has two columns. Go to that one for a minute. And then you can come back. The inerrancy of scripture, unqualified.

[20:12] Inerrancy means the Bible is free from any error and that it speaks the truth whether it addresses doctrine, ethics, or history. It gives you the truth no matter what.

[20:26] Unqualified says inerrancy means the Bible communicates the purposes of God flawlessly, but contains factual errors and discrepancies. God gets across his idea.

[20:38] The men who wrote got across their idea, but there are some things in there that were wrong. And then there's ones who say, uh-uh, nope, it is right in everything it says. I would be the unqualified.

[20:50] I believe God's word is right in everything it says. So go back to that thing about the arguments for the unqualified. And one of the things they use is language.

[21:03] They say, nope, the Bible is qualified. You have to qualify this inerrancy thing because of the language that is used in the Bible. They say because the Bible uses imprecise language.

[21:16] Or the Bible uses generalities. Or it uses, you know, different types of things that's not quite precise. The round numbers. We're going to look at a verse today in the morning service.

[21:28] It talks about the fact that the Jews, when they were attacked there in the Persian Empire, 75,000 were killed. Okay?

[21:40] Are you sure it wasn't 75,001 or 2? And they'd say, no, see, the Bible's not precise, so therefore you can't, you know. I know I've got, Margaret?

[21:51] They also use the Bible to argue against itself. They say, Jesus is all forgiving and all well. So even though it says this is a sin in the Bible, it really isn't because Jesus is all forgiving.

[22:06] Yeah. They try to do that. Yep. Yep. Yep, they do. I know I've got at least two of you in here. So how many in here are 80? 80.

[22:17] 80. One, two. Okay. Now, are you really 80? So today is the birthday for both of you? Nope.

[22:29] Today's not your birthday either. So you're not really 80, are you? Nope. You're 80 plus. Huh? 80 and three quarters. 80 and three quarters. Okay.

[22:40] And Fred? 81 and a half. 81 and a half. Okay. So you're not really. 80. And they say, see, they're not precise enough.

[22:51] That's what they say about the Bible. If the Bible says you're 80, they're like, no. But what do we say? We say you're 80, right? We both. And I ask who's 80, you both raise your hand.

[23:01] So you consider yourself to be 80. I consider myself to be 68 until three weeks from now. Then I'll be 69. But, you know, we say those things.

[23:16] And these people would say, no, that's not precise enough. You have to say, I'm 80 and seven months and three days.

[23:27] I'm going, well, you're just going to file with that. Yeah. That's what most people would say, but not these people. They would say, no. 82nd year. Yep. So we all use imprecise language as part of our normal language.

[23:43] And so when God does it in the Bible, he knew who he was writing to. He was writing to humans. He's writing to us. And so he would use things like that.

[23:54] Many years ago, there was, for some reason, the publishing company had to change their printers or something. And before the Bible could even get out of that warehouse, they found one error in it that just about destroyed the whole Bible.

[24:16] I think it said something like, thou shalt kill. Yeah. In the Ten Commandments. And they destroyed all those Bibles before they even made the best of the friends.

[24:27] Because you want it to be what it says. Yep. Yep. But God had to be in there to point that out. To point it out to somebody. Yep. So. Yep. The Bible talks about the rising and the setting of the sun.

[24:42] They would say, no, no, no. The sun doesn't rise and set. We all know that. The earth's rotating and evolving and, you know. But to us, doesn't it appear to rise and set on the horizon?

[24:55] Yeah. And so the Bible uses that terminology that we understand. But they're saying, no, no, no. It's imprecise. Because, you know, and we're saying, no, God knew exactly what he was doing.

[25:08] Go with me over to Matthew chapter 14. Matthew chapter 14. Matthew 14.

[25:20] Matthew 14. I'll read the first part of this. I won't read the whole thing. Verses 13 through 21.

[25:31] Because you'll know what's going on here in a minute. Matthew 14, starting at verse 13. When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart. And when the people had heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities.

[25:49] And Jesus went forth and saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion toward them. And he healed their sick. And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, this is a desert place, and the time has now passed.

[26:02] Send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves victuals. But Jesus said unto them, they need not depart. Give them to eat. And they said, we have five loaves and two fishes.

[26:14] And you know the rest of the story from when they're on. They have five loaves and two fishes. What don't we know about this story? What information is not given to us in this story?

[26:30] What the boy's name? What the boy's name? We talked about that. Remember a little while ago we were doing those in the Bible that we don't know their names, but they had an impact. The boy who had the five loaves and two fishes.

[26:43] We don't know his name. What else don't we know? How God did it. No, we don't know that. But even just in the details, we don't know.

[26:57] It says it was evening. But it was still light enough and that you could still have time to feed them before it got dark. So what time was it exactly? We don't know. What's the exact number of men that were there?

[27:08] It says about 5,000 if you read it. It doesn't say 5,000 exactly. It says about. How about how many women and children were there? We don't know. What about the fish and the loaves?

[27:23] Were they big fish? Were they little fish? What size were the fish? And the loaves, were they the round loaves or were they the long stick type loaves? What did they? Did they have lovin?

[27:36] Did they have lovin? Yep. We don't know that either. And how big were the baskets? Were they little baskets they'd been passing around and God had been refunding? Or did they have big baskets? It doesn't tell us any of those things.

[27:49] Does that mean we don't believe the story? It doesn't have any bearing on the story. It doesn't have any bearing on the story and what he was trying to teach us. Exactly. God gave us what we need to understand what he was giving to us.

[28:04] Just because I left out details about these things doesn't mean the story doesn't have an impact on us. That God can supply the need any time he wants to.

[28:14] It doesn't tell you what kind of fish they were either. It doesn't tell you what kind of fish they were. I don't really care what kind of fish it was. I don't like fish. Anyway.

[28:25] It doesn't have scales and fins. Probably not. It didn't have scales and fins on it. All right. So why didn't God give us all the details?

[28:36] Why doesn't he give us everything we need? Well, one of the simplest, easiest to understand explanations for that is I can take this up and I can carry this around with me and I can take it anywhere I want to go.

[28:50] If it had all the details of everything that happened, how big is that book going to be? And we're not carrying it around with us. Well, you've been saying that the Bible itself said everything that Jesus, just Jesus, had done on earth, the world could not hold the books.

[29:09] Yep. Yep. It does say that in John. Yep. So, good point. So, the Bible didn't set a standard for itself to be, you know, impossibly precise in everything that it gave us.

[29:28] But, when it comes to doctrine, God gave us exactly what we need to know to understand the doctrines that he's giving to us.

[29:39] Whether it be the doctrine of holiness of God or the way of salvation, which is really important to us, or things concerning the deity of Christ or whatever.

[29:52] God gave us everything we need for those things. How many fish he had? Well, we know how many fish he had. But what kind of fish and all that? We don't need to know that. We just need to know that he had them.

[30:03] All right. And it seems amazing that this same book has lasted so long. Mm-hmm. This book has been around a long time. Yep. So.

[30:14] All right. About 2,000 years. Or if you thought of birth, it was not to be ready. Well, actually, if you go to the Old Testament, it was longer than that. But the New Testament, yes. About 2,000 years.

[30:26] So. What about this hypothetical 14 million years old prophetic? Yeah. Yeah. I don't go along with that. About 12,000 years.

[30:37] That's right. Yeah. It's about 12,000. So 12 days. About 2 million years. Just a pig named Speculation. We'll talk about that some more later.

[30:48] So. All right. It's quarter past. Let's have a word of prayer. And we'll pick up next week on content. We've talked about language and then content. So. Do you have any, Father?