Understanding the Inspiration and Inerrancy
1 Peter 1:10–11
Opening Prayer
“Father, we come to You this evening. We recognize that we are living in
incredibly chaotic times. We have a lack of leadership from the upper levels of
government all the way down to the bottom. We have people in leadership who are
more concerned about maintaining their power and privileges than they are about
serving the people and serving the Constitution of this nation.
We have people who have turned a
blind eye to the fact that we have an enemy who has declared war against us and
though not all Muslims have declared war, the enemy who has declared war are those who all hold to the Islamic religion which is not
just a religion but is a political ideology as well.
Father, by not being willing and
not having the guts to identify the enemy we leave ourselves open to greater
attack. If we can’t identify a problem, we can’t solve the problem. All they
have is false solutions. This is just another form of idolatry. It’s another
form of arrogance.
Father, we pray that you would
protect this nation. That you would give us leaders who would have the courage
to stand up and speak the truth and have the wisdom to know how to approach a
resolution of the problem.
Father, we pray above all that we,
as believers, might be a light to others and be willing to stand firm and
communicate the gospel to those who are searching for truth, those who question
whether there is truth, and those who are just wandering around in the
darkness. The Scripture says we are to shine as lights in the midst of a wicked
and perverse generation. Give us the courage to do that.
Father, because we have Your Word,
we can understand truth. In the Psalms we read that it is in Your
light that we see light. May we come to understand that Your
truth will be more and more enlightened each time we study it. In Christ’s name
we pray. Amen.”
We’re studying in 1 Peter. Since a
major theme in 1 Peter has to do with suffering, one of the things I’ve been
doing is taking a look at different examples that come out of the period of the
Reformation in England. I’ll be getting to some others as well. These are
examples of Christians who have faced and endured and suffered through some
pretty intense persecution, hostility, torture, and things of that nature.
Three names that were well known
in Scotland in the 1500s and 1600s were the names of Patrick Hamilton, John
Knox, and George Wishart. We’ll look at each one of
these as we go through this. Patrick Hamilton is the one I’m going to talk
about tonight. He was born in 1504. Let’s contextualize that just a little bit.
This is a period of the greatest
debauchery and the greatest perversion and the greatest corruption in the Roman
Catholic Church. I’m not picking on Roman Catholics. It’s an historical
reality.
In the context of the early 1500s
you had a massive reform movement that developed within the church. It was part
of a counter-reformation movement that was called the Jesuits. That began in
the 1520s.
We’re in 1504 and we’re just about
twelve years after the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, or the
western hemisphere when this man Patrick Hamilton is born in Scotland near
Glasgow. As he grew up which was true in many, many generations and through
several centuries in Scotland and England, children learned the Bible at the
feet of their parents.
Their mothers read Bible stories
to them and read the Bible to them. This is probably one of the most
significant things any parent can do. It’s better than reading them anything
else. Just tell them Bible stories over and over again.
As a result of that, the Word of
God dominated in Patrick Hamilton’s life. His father wanted a church career for
him. Remember this is a time as he reached adulthood that he goes through that
shift between the end of the Roman Catholic dominance and the beginnings, just
the very beginnings of the Protestant Reformation which
began October 31, 1517.
Now when Patrick was thirteen
years old in 1517 his father secured for him his first work at a church. It’s
Roman Catholic because Luther is just beginning to become known. Actually at
the time Patrick didn’t want anything to do with church work so he left home
and he went to Paris.
He went to the Sorbonne at the
University of Paris where he became a student and heard about Luther’s protest.
For an entire year the Sorbonne studied nothing but Luther’s writings in order
to come to understand what these issues were.
He graduated from the Sorbonne in
1520 and went back to Scotland to study at the University of St. Andrews. He
eventually joined the faculty. The Scottish parliament at this time condemned
Lutheranism as heresy. If you were guilty of heresy you would be executed
because they still had this unity between the church and the state. To reject
the church religion was an act of treason.
Patrick by this time had adopted
Lutheran views, the views of the Reformation. He immediately began to be sought
after for arrest. He fled the country, went to Germany, and spent time with
Luther and other Reformation leaders.
He determined to go back to
Scotland in order to preach the gospel of salvation by faith alone in Christ
alone. Crowds, huge crowds came to hear him and many were converted. In 1528 he
was arrested. They tried and sentence him to death.
At high noon on February 29, 1528
they led him out to be hanged. He handed a friend his copy of the gospels, took
off his cap and gown which were part of his garments as an academician in the
University. The executioner chained him to the post and attempted to set the
wood on fire.
The wood was damp and did not burn
well. It burned for six hours before he died. When it appeared the fire was at
last going to kill him, his last words were, “How long, O God, shall darkness
cover this kingdom?”
Those were the men whose deaths
lit up England for the gospel of Jesus Christ. There may come a time in our
futures when we may face something very similar. It’s going on in places like
Syria and Iraq and it’s happened recently in Egypt and other places in the
Middle East.
There is no necessary reason why
Islam, radical Islam, has declared war on us that this would not happen here as
long as we refuse to recognize that we have an enemy that seeks our
destruction.
We’re studying about how to endure
testings. I want to go over some things we covered
last time. We’re in this three-verse section as we move through the first
chapter where Peter writes, “Of this
salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of
the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time
[what kind of circumstances] the Spirit
of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the
sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed
that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now
have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by
the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things which angels desire to look into.”
There’s a lot that’s touched on in
these three verses. We have various doctrines that are here. I need to go back
and develop some of what I was developing last week. Last week I was going to
just look at a brief summary of inerrancy and infallibility but through the
miracle of our website, I searched and realized I really haven’t taught in
depth or a lot on inerrancy or infallibility in a long time, so we need to
drill down on that a little bit in the next couple of weeks.
So the key word that we see here,
as I pointed out last time, includes the word salvation. Does that refer to
eternal deliverance from the Lake of Fire or is that talking about deliverance
from trials and testing in the here and now? Surviving them. Being delivered
from them so we can move on to the next.
As I pointed out last time, that’s
the context. It’s not talking about future deliverance from the Lake of Fire
but of deliverance in time. So “Of this
deliverance” would be a better translation. “Of this deliverance the prophets have inquired and searched carefully.”
As we look at this we see at the
end of verse 11 this emphasis on the “sufferings
of Christ and the glories that would follow”. That is really an important
phrase because as we go through this section down through verse 12 we’re still
in the introduction to this epistle. What any good writer does in his
introduction is to do what? To introduce that which he’s
going to be talking about.
What we’re being introduced to
from verse 6 all the way down to verse 12 is the topic related to suffering and
how to survive suffering and adversity in this life. It’s connected here to
glory. The focal point here isn’t on Messianic prophecies about Christ’s
sufferings on the Cross. That’s not ignored but it’s
more than that. It’s a much more robust concept.
It’s focusing on the fact that
what the Bible emphasizes about Christ is that His suffering would be followed
by glorification. The focal point, as we’ll see, is going to be on
glorification.
This whole issue of suffering
leading to glorification is what angels desire to look into. This is something
they don’t understand from their own experience.
So what I pointed out last time, “Of this deliverance from temporal testing
which brought glory to God, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully …
the Spirit of Christ … testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the
glories that would follow.” Those two things have to be understood. It’s a
deep connection grammatically.
This salvation is a phase 2
salvation.
Just as a reminder, we have three
phases of salvation, three phases. Someone called them three tenses of
salvation. We’re saved when we trust in Christ in a moment of time which is justification. We are saved from the penalty
of sin.
In phase 2 we are saved from the
power of sin. In phase 3 we’re saved from the presence of sin. Peter is writing
about this deliverance from trials in our spiritual life.
In these three verses we get an
insight into how the prophets function in relation to the revelation that God
gave them. The more I thought about this the last week I realized it’s just
remarkable. It’s an important part of Bibliology. Bibliology is that branch of Systematic Theology that
studies the nature and the history of the text of the Bible.
Part of Bibliology
looks at the origin of the Bible, the origin in terms of the divine inspiration
and inerrancy as God spoke and revealed His will and His message to and through
the prophets.
They did not always understand or
fully grasp all that they wrote. They were just communicators of a message. As
they looked at that message, they struggled to grasp all of its meaning so
they’re investigating the meaning of the passage itself.
That’s what these two words are
focused on. EKZETEO and EXERAUNAO. If you notice, both of these words begin with EK.
That is the Greek preposition which means “out of”
like exegesis, getting something out of the Scripture. It has that same prefix.
What this is emphasizing is that
this prefix just intensifies these words. They’re really investigating,
studying, analyzing, thinking, meditating, figuring out
all that’s been revealed to them so that they can understand it.
They talked about the grace that
would come to them. I pointed out last time that there are several different
categories of grace: common, saving, sanctifying, dying, and other categories
of grace but those are the main ones.
What they’re examining is the
grace that would come to you. In context that is the grace to
survive testing and trials. Whatever that may be, whether it has to do
with your own emotions, your own psychology, your own background, or whatever
is going on between your ears and what influenced that in your background to
external things.
There are three enemies we talk
about in the spiritual life. Right? We talk about the world, the flesh, and the
devil although the order should be the devil, the world, and the flesh.
The devil and the world are
outside influences. The flesh is the inside enemy which constantly seeks to
influence us to thinking that it’s really a good idea to do it our way instead
of God’s way.
We’re so inclined to follow the
flesh that it’s like we’re three miles down the road before we realize, “I did
it again.” It’s like when you’re on a diet and all of a sudden you sit down and
start eating a dessert and you think, “I really shouldn’t have done that.” It’s
our inclination, our habit because we’re just done it so much.
So they are prophesying of how
God’s grace supplies us with what we need to survive and be delivered from
these trials.
They were “searching what or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ was in them
was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the
glories that would follow.”
A couple of things I wanted to go
back over in this verse. First of all, this word searching is the root verb of EXERAUNAO which we saw back in verse 10. It’s just reinforcing their
investigation, their examination of what has been given them.
Here you have a prophet. What
happens in terms of the mechanics is that God reveals to him either internally
through a dream or externally through a vision or maybe audibly, God
communicates something to him. The prophet writes it down. We know that what he writes down is overseen by God the Holy Spirit so
it’s free from error.
He doesn’t obliterate the
personality of the prophet. In a few cases, what they write is like dictation.
But inspiration is not a dictation theory. For example, the Mosaic Law was
dictation. God wrote it with His fingers. In other cases, God is allowing the
author to write in terms of his own personality, his own background, his own
strengths and weaknesses, and his own experiences. All of that comes through.
God the Holy Spirit oversees the
process so that it is going to be free from error. So they get this and they
write it down and they look at it. “What did God tell me? Hmm, that’s really
interesting. What does that mean?” So they start thinking that through.
They know other passages. They
start trying to put these things together to figure out what they are. That’s
that examination.
You have two words, searching what
or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating [NKJV]. This is in reference to inspiration they are
indwelt by the Holy Spirit. This isn’t the same indwelling as the New
Testament. I think this is the first time I’ve seen an indication of an
indwelling. It’s not an external thing but it’s a temporary indwelling or
filling. It might be comparable with what the New Testament refers to with the
term PIMPLEMI because that’s a word that’s often used.
It’s not PLEROO which is a word that is used to be filled
with the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18. We quote that all the time, again and again.
Most people probably have that memorized by this point.
A related word is PIMPLEMI. PIMPLEMI always shows up when the Holy Spirit filled
Mary and then you have the Magnificat of Mary. The
Holy Spirit fills Peter in Acts 2 and then you have Peter’s sermon. Later on
it’s Paul. This happened several times in Scripture where you have the use of
this word PIMPLEMI and then they speak. That’s describing a specific
kind of indwelling for the purpose of revelation that occurs with the authors
of Scripture.
The Spirit of Christ is in them
and it’s indicating certain things. This phrase “searching what or what manner of time”
which I have in these two blocks on the slide. “Into what” is the Greek word EIS which means directed towards something. EIS TINA is a pronoun that could be into what or into who, or
it could be as BDAG, the Greek Lexicon says, it could be what
sort of. So it’s searching what sort of.
The next phrase is different
terminology and it could be into what time and what circumstances the Spirit
indicated. What’s going on here is that they’re looking at these Messianic
prophecies that He’s going to suffer and He’s going to be glorified. They’re asking
the question, “What are the circumstances going to be when the God-man comes?
What are the circumstances going to be when you have this God-man Savior that’s
on the earth? What’s that going to be like and how does He handle this
suffering that’s going to come?”
They’re thinking through these
questions. That’s what Peter is saying. This isn’t a passage that’s asking what
is often thought, that they’re asking when the Messiah will come. It’s much
more profound than that. They have understood roughly when the Messiah is
coming.
They’re trying to figure out how
this works that you have a God-man who is going to go through suffering and
what those circumstances are going to be like and how God’s going to sustain
Him. That’s what they’re trying to figure out.
They have limitations on them in
the Old Testament but Peter is saying that’s what they were working at. They
were trying to figure out what that time, when it would be and what it would be
like.
Once again verse 11 talks about
the Spirit of Christ was indicating something, DELOO. That is related to
inspiration. The Holy Spirit is instructing and teaching them, trying to reveal
or explain things and they’re trying to figure this out.
Don’t get this idea which we often
do and I can understand why that, “The Holy Spirit revealed it to them so they
really understood it just instantly.” What this verse is saying that no, they
didn’t grasp it instantly. They wrote it down and then they had to figure it
out.
The second word, PROMARTUROMAI indicates that was indeed genuine prophecy
that was testified before hand.
Then we get to these two words: PATHEMA and DOXA. DOXA is glory. PATHEMA is suffering. These are the sufferings related to
Christ and the glories that would follow. You can’t separate these. They’re
linked by a conjunction grammatically but the issue here is suffering followed
by glory.
That’s what you see all the way
through 1 Peter. I want to point this out to you. I want to run through this a
little bit and give you a rundown and look at these verses that are given in 1
Peter related to Christ and suffering and glory.
Here are the verses. 1 Peter 1:7, 11, 21, 24 and 1 Peter 4:11, 13, 14; 5:1, 4, 10.
There are ten times in 1 Peter when you have the word “glory”. One time it’s
talking about the glory of man and that’s in 1 Peter 1:24. The rest of the time
it just shows that nine times Peter refers to glory.
Notice how they’re grouped, in the
first chapter and the fourth and fifth chapters. That tells us something. In
this first chapter we’ve already had this one reference that the genuineness of
your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it’s tested
by fire, may be found to praise, honor and glory at the revelation.
What do we have? We have that
there’s testing and various trials in 1 Peter 1:6 that result in praise, honor,
and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. This is part of the introduction.
He comes back and connects them
again in verse 11 which is the verse we’re looking at
now, the sufferings and the glories of Christ. Your suffering will lead to
glory just like Christ’s suffering led to glory. If you want to understand how
your present time suffering is going to lead to glory, then you need to pay
attention to the example of Jesus Christ.
That’s the focal point of this
whole epistle. It really starts pulling together when you get to 1 Peter 4
starting in verse 11. As we look at this in 1 Peter 4:1 we read, “Therefore since Christ suffered for us in
the flesh.” So we see through this section the emphasis on Christ’s
suffering and what is going on in terms of that suffering.
Let’s go back to 1 Peter 2:21, “For to this you were called: because Christ
also suffered for us.” There’s an emphasis on Christ’s suffering. Then in 1
Peter 2:23 it says, “He was reviled and
He did not revile in return when He suffered. He didn’t threaten but committed
Himself to Him who judges rightly.” Then in verse 24 it says, “He bore our sins on the tree and it was by
His stripes [the whipping He was given with the Roman scourge was His
suffering].” Look at this emphasis on Jesus’ suffering. He was beaten. He’s
whipped. He bears our sins.
Then we get into 1 Peter 4. That’s
the pattern He sets up to understand suffering and authority at the end of
chapter 3 where he gives more examples. Then in chapter 4 he draws a conclusion
from these examples. In 1 Peter 4:1 he says, “Christ suffered for us in the flesh. Arm yourselves also with the same
mind.”
This is our example. We’re to look
at how Jesus suffered in the flesh. “For
He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.” Of course, Jesus
didn’t cease from sin because He never sinned, but He’s ceasing from living in
a sinful world. He’s going on to glorification. We’ll look at this when we get
to that chapter.
The point I’m saying is that in
verses 1 Peter 1:10–12, this suffering and glory is connected in verse 11. It
is just introducing the importance of that connection with Jesus as our
example. That’s what gets fleshed out and developed when we get into the main
body of this epistle.
1 Peter 4:1 comes back and says, “Since Christ suffered for us in the flesh,
arm yourselves with the same mind.” He goes on to develop this a little
more in 1 Peter 4:11–16. That really becomes the heart, the focal point of this
whole epistle. He says, “If anyone
speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it
as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified.”
You ought to circle that word in your Bible every time you see the word suffering
or glorified or a synonym thereof, you ought to circle it or highlight it in
your Bible.
In 1 Peter 4:12, Peter says, “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning
the fiery trial [suffering] which is
to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you.” When it really
gets bad, don’t think that somehow God lost control.
“But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings that
when His glory is revealed [suffering followed by glory].” This pattern was
set in Christ and we can follow that. In 1 Peter 4:14 he says, “If you are reproached for the name of
Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory [that word again] and of God rests upon you. On their part He
is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified.” Suffering leads to glorification.
Then he says in verse 15, “But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a
thief, an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people’s matters.” In 2 Peter
he’s going to make the point that when you suffer for doing bad, you deserve
it. If you suffer for doing what’s right, that is what has value for your
spiritual life.
In verse 16 he says, “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let
him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.” So these are
the verses relating suffering and glorification and the key part is in 1 Peter
4:11–12. All of that is just to sort of catch us up and see how all of this
fits together.
I’m exegeting
myself through these three verses and then we’re going to come back and study
the related doctrines that are touched on in this verse. 1 Peter 1:12 says, “To them it was revealed …” Notice the
word “revealed”. What doctrine is that? Inspiration. It’s part of Bibliology. Categorize it that way.
“To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were
ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who
have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things
which angels desire to look into.”
This first word. “To them.” To who?
To the prophets. To these Old Testament prophets it
was revealed. We’ve already talked about the initial revelation given to them.
I think this touches more on illumination here that as they studied, as they
examined, as they investigated, it became clear to them what the significance
of the text was.
I think that God the Holy Spirit
was helping them to understand to some degree the significance of their
revelation regarding the suffering and the glorification of the Messiah. This
is a problem, I believe, that happened in the history of Judaism is that they
forgot about the suffering Messiah in Isaiah. They focused on the glorious
Messiah. Or they divided them between two different Messiahs.
The focus or the thrust of Isaiah
is that there’s first going to be a suffering Messiah who will justify His
people. That’s Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith in Christ. First you
have a suffering Messiah who dies. “He,
who knew no sin, was made sin for us that the righteousness of God might be
found in us.” First you have a suffering Messiah; then you have the
glorified Messiah. Suffering is followed by glorification.
The use of APOKALUPTO here, which is where we get our word apocalyptic,
just means revelation or disclosure or the unveiling of something. “To them it was revealed that, not to
themselves.” What he’s saying there is that while it was revealed to them
the application of what was going on wasn’t directed toward them and their
generation but it was in the future. It was to those who would come after the
suffering of the Messiah.
“Not to themselves but to us [Church Age believers] they are ministering.” What they were
writing was really targeted to strengthening those believers who came after the
suffering. DIAKONEO means to serve. That’s where you get this idea of a deacon.
He serves a congregation. That’s the noun form, DIAKONOS.
It means to wait on someone, to
minister to someone, to support, and to aid them and
or help them. So this information that’s coming in the Old Testament is
designed to help us, to aid us, as we face suffering that will be followed by
glorification. It’s interesting and grammatically it’s an imperfect verb which indicates it’s an ongoing action. It wasn’t just
one time that they revealed something but it’s something that went on and on
through the ministry of these unnamed prophets.
They were ministering to us what?
The things. What does that describe? The things. This is a plural pronoun from AUTOS which means those things. It just describes certain things which you get from the context. Here it refers to the
doctrine that would develop from understanding the relationship of suffering
that is followed by glorification.
So “to them [the Old Testament prophets] it was revealed.” They came to understand that the application
wasn’t to themselves but that they were ministering
the things, the doctrines related to the suffering that would be followed by
glorification which has now been reported. That’s the word meaning to announce
or proclaim something. This is referring to the fact that they heard the
gospel, the Old Testament Torah taught, and now they’ve come to understand this
important teaching that glorification follows suffering.
Then he says that it’s now been
reported to you, it’s now been announced to you through those who have preached
the gospel. It’s DIA which emphasizes the human means
by which the information was transmitted: the prophets, the apostles, the
pastors, and the evangelists. The verb here, even though it takes seven words to
translate this into English; it’s only three words in
the Greek. It’s a preposition, an article and the verb EUAGGELIZO which means to evangelize.
It’s now been reported or
announced to you through those who have evangelized you, those who gave you the
gospel, and those who taught you about Jesus as the Messiah. Remember he’s talking
to a primarily Jewish background audience. They had understood passages like
Isaiah 53 and passages from Zechariah, passages from Isaiah 7:14, passages from
Isaiah 9:6, and other passages in the Old Testament that predicted the first
coming of the Messiah. They knew that fit Jesus.
They had heard the good news and
this news was proclaimed to them by the Holy Spirit
sent from Heaven. They had the Holy Spirit in them which
gave them their spiritual gift in them, apostle, prophet, or pastor-teacher, or
evangelist. It was the Holy Spirit who was empowering their proclamation of the
gospel.
We see this predicted by Jesus in
John 14:16 in the Upper Room discourse, the night before Jesus went to the
Cross. He’s giving His final instruction to His disciples before He’s arrested.
He’s explaining what’s going to happen. He’s going to get arrested, He’s going
to be tortured, He’s going to be crucified, and He’s going to be buried. He’s
told them He would rise from the dead. Then He tells them that He’s got to leave
and go to Heaven where He will prepare a place for them.
God’s not going to leave them
alone. He’s going to send to them another Comforter, another of the same kind.
In John 14:16 Jesus says, “And I will pray the Father, and He will give
you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever.” Another is ALLOS which means another of the same kind. It’s another Helper,
a divine Comforter. This is a prophecy on Jesus’ part telling them that the
coming of the Holy Spirit would be not too far off. Fifty days later on the Day
of Pentecost they would receive the Holy Spirit.
John 14:26 says,
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in My name.” It’s a reference of the Triune action of
God. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each of whom are involved in
this.
John 15:26, “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.”
This is a very important doctrine that was developed in the early Church and it
talks about the procession of the Holy Spirit. This is one of those things that
divided Eastern Orthodoxy from the Western Church because they disagreed about
the Holy Spirit proceeding from both the Father and the Son, not just from the
Father. It emphasizes the equality of the authority of both Father and Son in
the Trinity.
John 16:7, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go
away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I
depart, I will send Him to you.” Again we see Jesus is involved in the
sending, the Father is involved in the sending, and both Father and Son send
the Holy Spirit who descends upon the Church on the Day of Pentecost and that’s
described in Acts 2.
So what have they done? The
recipients of the epistle heard the gospel that was revealed to them by gifted
men gifted by the Holy Spirit and it’s these things, the things here which
angels desire to look into is related back to the things here. The first things. What did I say that described? The
doctrine related to the suffering followed by glorification.
This whole concept of how God
brings us to glorification through suffering is what the angels desire to look
into. They’re watching to see how we handle the suffering. They’re watching the
whole panorama to see how it leads to glorification at the Judgment Seat of
Christ.
“Desire” here is to want
something, to desire something, to long for something. So the angels want to
look into this. That’s the only way they can learn about this because this
dynamic didn’t take place in the angelic realm.
To look into is an interesting
verb. PARAKUPTO means to stoop down and take a long, hard
look at something, to really analyze and study something. Think about this. The
next time you go through a little adversity, things are a little difficult, you
have to pick up that phone and call customer service and that’s always a
challenge. Just think, there’s an angel sitting right there and he’s just
looking at you. How are you going to handle this? I’m trying to learn about the
grace of God and I’m watching you. That doesn’t seem very gracious what you
just called that guy. This isn’t a good lesson. Go read “The Screwtape Letters” sometime by C.S. Lewis.
So this is what’s going on. The
focus here is encouraging that we are going through a process Jesus is going
through, suffering leading to glorification. This is a pattern that actually
goes back into the Old Testament. Suffering and
glorification. Suffering and then glorification comes later.
We look at everything in such
incremental, tiny, tiny segments right here, right now. We have to think, as my
mother used to say, beyond the end of our nose and look at the long game. The
long game is glorifying God over the course of our spiritual growth and
maturation. He takes us through these different categories of suffering in
order to bring us to maturity.
Now we’ve come to understand how
this fits within the passage. But this really has a lot of implications for our
understanding of the doctrine of inerrancy and the doctrine of inspiration. As
I said at the beginning, I haven’t taught through this in some time apparently
so I thought it’s a good time to review.
One of the reasons I’m reviewing this which I mentioned last week is this article Dr. Bob Wilkin
recently wrote for “Grace in Focus”. It’s a bi-monthly publication put out by
the Grace Evangelical Society of which Wilkin is the director. You can go to
their website. It’s faithalone.org. In
the left hand column there’s a place where you can click on the “Grace in Focus
Journal” and that will pop up. At the top you’ll see the article I’m
referencing because that’s the most recent. Just under that you’ll see the
May/June article which was entitled “Can We Trust New Testament Professors?”
I alluded to that some time past
and also the last time I mentioned this particular article. I just want to
point out a couple of things about this. In the previous article, “Can We Trust
New Testament Professors?” he was primarily evaluating trends that are going on
in evangelical scholarship related to understanding the Bible inerrancy and can
we trust it. What got him really focused on this was a book review of Dr. Craig
Blomberg’s book called “Can We Still Believe the Bible?”
What’s interesting is I get
e-mails all the time from people asking questions. Sometime back someone asked
me about Blomberg. At the time I’d been scanning
different parts of his commentary on Matthew but nothing had really
red-flagged. That’s what happens a lot of times like that, you don’t really see
certain things that stand out that you question.
Blomberg is a professor at Denver Seminary. He’s
written a book called “Can We Still Believe the Bible?” He comes down to what I
would call this real squishy new position on inerrancy. He would stand up and
say he believes in the inerrancy of Scripture but listen to a couple of things
he says.
One of the things I thought that
y’all would like or eat up or spit out is that in his introduction he makes this
statement, “I refuse ever to be suckered back into the view of my young adult
years when I actually believed the end of times would play out as Hal Lindsey
claimed they would.” You know, this is just another guy, as Tommy Ice and I
would phrase it, who said I was a teenage
dispensationalist. Like that was a really bad thing. But now he’s a scholar and
thinks he’s learned so much and has moved beyond that. That was just so
juvenile, he’s saying. The trouble is that his theology is pretty border-line heretical as far as I’m concerned.
Anyway, just quoting from some
things that Wilkin says. He talks about how he misrepresented Blomberg a couple of ways because Blomberg
was representing other people’s opinions, not his own, and that was not
clarified by Wilkin. Also he made some statements about what Dr. Darrell Bock
believed. Dr. Bock is a New Testament professor at Dallas Seminary.
Bock called him up and objected to
several of the things he said. Wilkin said, “He objected to the implication
that the men I cited believed there was nothing
at all historical about the biblical accounts.” Wilkin goes on to say, “My
apologies to Bock and the DTS faculty for
leaving some readers the mistaken impression that I was saying they considered
the creation account, the worldwide flood, and Jonah, and Job as pure fiction. I should have been
clearer. What I meant as I shall now explain is that they do not consider all
of these accounts to be literal history.”
He goes on to say, “What many of
the DTS professors believe [not men in the Bible
Exposition department]…” Klinger, he’s in the Bible Ex department. I only talk
to guys over there in the Bible Ex department because they’re pretty solid. He
goes on and says that in his conversations with Darrell Bock, Bock said that
passages like Genesis 1–3 can be read in three ways. As literal history, as poetic history, or poetic fiction.
Wilkin points out that to read
Genesis 1–3 as literal history means that Adam and Eve were historical persons
created in precisely the way described by the text. Wilkin says, “This is my
view. [My view too] However, my view is not mainstream
today. Most evangelical scholars today hold to option 2, that Genesis 1–3 is
poetic history.” Reading Genesis 1–3 as poetic history means that Adam and Eve
were historical persons but the story of their creation and fall is told using
poetic, that is, figurative language. There has to be a kernel of truth [quote
from Blomberg]. However is figurative and symbolic is
up for debate.
For example, D. A. Carson [Carson
is brilliant, brilliantly wrong in a number of places. He teaches up at Trinity
Evangelical Divinity School in New Testament]. Carson, in his book “The God Who
is There”, says, “I hold that the Genesis account is a
mixed genre that feels like history and really does give us some historical
particulars [he doesn’t tell us which ones]. At the same time it is full of
demonstrable symbolism. Sorting out what is symbolic and what is not is very
difficult.”
You see, guys like this, in their
little egghead ivory towers they miss that something can be literal and
symbolic at the same time. Like the Ark of the Covenant.
It was a literal box covered in literal gold which was symbolic of Jesus. Just
because it’s symbolic doesn’t mean it’s not literal and historical. There are
lots of things that are literal and historical but they’re also symbolic, like
manna. Be careful when you read something that says something is symbolic.
Don’t think that symbolic means it automatically denies literal historicity.
Then Wilkins has a quote from
another New Testament scholar, Craig Keener. I’m just trying to give you an
idea of where things are going. These guys would all claim to hold to
inerrancy. Keener writes, “Apart from some Israelite parables, nowhere else in
the Bible do we read anything like this: a talking serpent convinces man and
wife to pluck a fruit that is knowledge. Not surprisingly many biblical
scholars including evangelical biblical scholars suspect some figurative
language here.”
Like I just said, figurative
language doesn’t exclude literal historicity. My question would be that we have
literal history and poetic history, but isn’t history history?
Right? What are we missing there? It can be poetic history but that doesn’t
mean it’s not telling real history, real people, and real events. But that’s
how they play fast and loose with things.
When we get in a society that
loses truth, what falls apart is communication. This is what happens in
hermeneutics because words don’t mean anything anymore when there’s not an
ultimate reference point. We’re battling this at where? Where else are we
battling this? Trying to understand the Constitution as a living document. We
can’t interpret anything anymore.
Let’s face it. We had a couple of
people in military gear with vests on and everything attached with names that
are clearly, clearly Arab and Islamic. I mean, how many people here are named Farook? How many people here know anybody named Farook? We don’t have Farooks in
the Christian community but the first thing you hear a lot of people saying was
“this is a Christian rightwing guy who just missed the target of the Planned
Parenthood.”
Things just don’t mean anything
anymore. Someone yells “Allah Akbar”. He’s got to be a Christian rightwing
extremist. Truth is so flexible and so fluid we no longer know what it means.
You can’t talk about anything. Communication breaks down. The more
communication we seem to have today the less anyone communicates anything
related to truth. They’re afraid of truth.
I had a conversation with a guy
today. He said, “People in my generation [he’s a young guy] don’t have any
convictions. They don’t want to have convictions. They don’t believe anything
is true. If you believe something is true, you’re being discriminatory against
everybody else that doesn’t believe that truth. So they don’t want to believe
in truth because if you believe any one thing is true, you’re being judgmental
just by believing one thing is true.”
I said, “Man, I’ve been teaching
that for fifteen years.” That’s where post-modernism leads you. It destroys
language. This is why we have a president who can’t come out and say it’s
Islamic terrorism because words have real meaning and he’s trying to avoid
that. He doesn’t want to believe that words have real meaning.
Anyway, back to Keener. Wilkin
says, “As Keener himself confirms, many
Biblical scholars hold this view. From my discussions with Bock it also appears
to be the majority position at Dallas Seminary and within the Evangelical
Theological Society.”
I think that’s important to recognize
this. We live in an era today when a lot of people who work hard and contribute
to ministries like Dallas Seminary don’t know what’s going on. These seminaries
are taking the hard earned money of lovely wonderful conservative
fundamentalist Christians under false pretenses, I believe. They have men on
their faculty whose interpretation of what their doctrinal statement means is
not the interpretation of Lewis Sperry Chafer or John Walvord
or Charles Ryrie.
I had the great privilege in 1976
to come to Dallas Seminary. My first semester I sat in my second class and the
professor was Charles Ryrie. I thought, “The Rapture can come now. I’m done.
This is great.” He was about fifty years old and he was always frail. He’s
still alive. He’s ninety. I saw a picture posted on Facebook.
Someone took a picture with him at a Free Grace Alliance meeting in Dallas a
couple of months ago. He still looks like a strong wind of one mile an hour
would blow him into the next county. He was always that way. But what a mind! A great mind. In areas of dispensationalism and free grace
and others, he’s just tremendous. He’s not so great on sanctification. He got
away from Chafer but he’s really great in a lot of areas. On Bibliology he was just tremendous.
Just to comment on another thing,
setting up why we need to study inerrancy and infallibility. Wilkin goes on to
say, “As I read Blomberg’s book ‘Can We Still Trust
the Bible?’ I was struck by how broadly he defined inerrancy. I suggested in my
review that most New Testament scholars, even those who claim to believe in
inerrancy, consider the events of Genesis 1–3 and Jonah and Job to be
historical only in a limited sense. In fact from the quotes from Keener and
Carson above and my conversations with Bock only confirm that most evangelical
scholars hold to viewing that holding Genesis 1–3 as poetical history and
almost all think that taking Genesis 1–3 as poetic and figurative is a view
that is at least discussable within the framework of inerrancy.”
In the Blomberg’s
book he says, “Parnell [who graduated from Dallas with his Th.D. in New
Testament and wrote a great book with Bob Thomas dealing with how they have a
lot of problems with the New Testament Department on how they view Jesus],
Thomas [who taught here at the 2009 Chafer
Conference], Norm Geisler, and Roach were
to be consistent and chastise every Old and New Testament commentary whose
views match those they demonize, they would scarcely find a Biblical scholar
left in the Evangelical Theological Society who would pass muster in their
eyes.”
If you’re interested in this, you
can find The
Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy here. It’s a PDF and you can read it. It’s about four or five pages
long. There were between 200 and 300 scholars from different institutions,
different schools, who participated in crafting that document. They all signed
it. They were men like Dwight Pentecost of Dallas Seminary, Charles Ryrie,
Elliot Johnson [who spoke here at the 2014 Chafer
Conference], Bob Thomas, Norm Geisler, and
many others.
That was the benchmark of biblical
inerrancy and infallibility in 1978. But here’s the issue. That’s still what I
hold. That’s what Bob Wilkin holds. We didn’t move. Everybody else shifted
left. Now we’re the radical, hyper inerrant fringe.
That’s insane. That’s what is going on.
Blomberg goes on to say, “It cannot be stressed
strongly enough that the Thomases and Geislers of the world do not speak for the vast majority of
evangelicals and inerrantists around the globe.”
Then he quotes a statement from
the president-elect of the Evangelical Society, Dan Wallace. At the end of this
statement, Wallace says, “If our starting point is embracing propositional
truths about the nature of Scripture rather than personally embracing Jesus
Christ as our Lord and King, we’ll be on that slippery slope and take a lot of
folks down with us.” The slippery slope is getting into theological error.
Earlier he mentioned inerrancy as a peripheral document.
“If our starting point is
embracing propositional truths about the nature of Scripture.” Wait a minute.
How you view Scripture is the foundation of everything else. So how you view
Scripture is the first domino. Ryrie has a great little book out called “What
You Should Know about Inerrancy”. He starts off this illustration where as a
kid you played dominoes. We all had this experience where you line up the
dominoes and you topple the first one and everything else falls. How you
understand the Bible is that first domino. When that falls, everything else
falls.
This idea that Dan Wallace states
that if our starting point is embracing propositional truths, that is that the
Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, rather than personally embracing
Jesus, how do you know anything about Jesus without first embracing the
Scripture as absolute truth? Answer that question.
We don’t ever know Jesus directly.
We only know Jesus through the Word of God. We only know Jesus by reading the
Scripture and believing that what it says is true and that the words that are
there are God’s words. Otherwise you’re just making it up. This is how far we
have fallen.
This is why it’s necessary that we
go through a study on the doctrine on the inspiration and inerrancy of
Scripture. It’s to come to understand what does the Scripture say about itself.
This is foundational. I never thought I would see this. Here you have a large
number of men on the faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary, according to this
article, who don’t believe in inerrancy the way it was defined by the faculty
when I was a student there.
That tells us something. That is a
vast warning because that puts us more and more on the fringe.
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for this time
we have to study Your Word and to be reminded that You
are the Author of Scripture. These are Your words
reflecting Your thoughts. The very words of Scripture have been breathed out by
You so that we can rely upon them.
We can trust in them. When life is
difficult, we know that we have an absolute rock of the Scripture to stand on
and it is true. We don’t have to say that maybe this is one of those verses
that isn’t quite true.
Father, we thank You that we have the Living Word, Jesus Christ, who died on
the cross for our sins. He is the living expression, the living communication
of who You Are. By trusting in Him and Him alone we
have eternal life.
We pray that we might be
challenged by what we study and it would cause us to think and investigate for
ourselves more into the nature of Your Word that we may truly understand it and
it may strengthen our faith and strengthen our understanding of our salvation
and your plan for our life.
We pray this in Christ’s name.
Amen.”