Inspiration
and Inerrancy
1 Peter 1:10-11
Opening
Prayer
ŅFather, weÕre thankful that during this last week we had a
tremendous opportunity to meet with other like-minded Bible teachers and listen
to others who have studied Your Word deeply and shared their insights and
taught from the Word and gave us insight and greater understanding in issues
related not only to the study of Your Word in terms of eschatology, but also
helped us to understand some of the issues going on in the church in America
today.
We learned how theyÕre impacting seminaries and impacting
Bible churches and other churches as we see these new ideas and heresies
trickle down from the seminary ivory tower and within a generation or two they
are common beliefs in the pew.
Father, we pray that we might be a bulwark of truth. We pray for Tommy and the others who
guide and direct the Pre-Trib Conference that it
might continue strong and in strong defense of Your Word.
Thank You for this church and its
faithfulness to Your Word. We pray that tonight as we study that You will help us to have a greater confidence in Your Word.
We pray this in ChristÕs name. Amen.Ó
I just want to start a little bit with what went on at the
Pre-Trib conference. For those of you who may be new
and may not have heard about this, this is the twenty-fourth conference. The
first one, I believe, was in 1991. It came together because of a vision with
Tim LaHaye and wanting to do something.
Someone recommended Tommy to him. Actually the genesis of
this, the very seminal thoughts on it, were in my living room in Dallas or in
Irving, Texas back in the late 80s. No one with any money or backing or any
prestige was around to give us any kind of a platform.
Nothing happened until Tim LaHayeÕs
ŅLeft BehindÓ books started to gain traction. Tommy told me last week that Tim LaHaye went on a missions trip travel for a year visiting
missionaries all over the world. As he did that he began to realize how little
there was that was being taught on dispensationalism, eschatology, or the Pre-Trib Rapture.
If you study it, twenty-seven percent of the Bible is
prophecy. Twenty-seven percent! Someone at the conference used the illustration
that if you were to go to your doctor and somehow surgically remove
twenty-seven percent of his knowledge, you wouldnÕt want to go to that doctor.
If you were to pick up an instruction manual from the IRS on
how to do your taxes, if twenty-seven percent of the information was missing,
you would not want that. If you went to an accountant and he was missing
twenty-seven percent of his education, then you would not want to go to that
accountant and yet, we have churches today who ignore twenty-seven percent of
the Bible.
I did an analysis of eschatological passages some years ago
and about eighteen percent of the Bible is unfulfilled prophecy. Yet that means
that almost one out of every five verses in Scripture has to be ignored if you
donÕt understand prophecy, if you donÕt understand eschatology.
This is incredibly important. God has dedicated a tremendous
amount of His Word to that. The founding of the Pre-Trib
Study Group was to give scholars and those who were involved in a lot of
popular ministries related to prophecy a platform where there was an exchange
of ideas in further in-depth Bible studies.
So much has come out of the research that they have done.
For example, up until 1991 there was a character who was very much anti-Pre-Trib. He still is. He still bangs the same drum. His name
is Dave MacPherson. HeÕs written a number of books
and he continues to pound the same lie, that is that John Nelson Darby was the
first to systematize dispensationalism and the first to clearly articulate and
define the doctrine of the Rapture, got it from a young fifteen- or
sixteen-year-old girl who was having some ecstatic experience by the name of
Margaret MacDonald.
One of the things that came out of that in the early 1990s
was they discovered an untranslated document that was
in a library somewhere in Berkeley, California who had a writer who went by the
name of Pseudo- Ephraem because his pseudonym was Ephraem, the Syrian but he was a few years earlier. This
was about a fourth or fifth century writing that even though it had a short Tribulation,
he clearly had the church being raptured before the Tribulation. How about
that?
Someone, some fourteen hundred years or thirteen hundred
years before Darby actually understood that the church would not go through the
time of wrath. Since then weÕve been put in touch with a guy who has spoken
three or four times over the last three or four years at Pre-Trib by the name of William Watson. He teaches history at
Colorado Christian University.
He was an NSA analyst in the early 70s at a Berlin
checkpoint. HeÕs one of those guys who just drills
down on details. He has spent numerous summers of his academic career going
over and reading the sermons [without spell check or standard spellings in the
1500 and 1600s for English] of thousands and thousands and thousands of sermons
and theologies from the English reformers. ThatÕs his specialty, 16th and 17th
century England.
He has discovered that there were hundreds and hundreds of
Puritans and other British Presbyterians who were not only Premillennial but they held to a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. He has recently
come out with a book that has been published by a new publishing house called
Lampion Press.
It was founded by my two friends, Wayne House whom some of
you known who went on that first Israel trip, and Tim Demy. Tim was in the
MasterÕs Program at Dallas with me. He spent his career as a chaplain in the
Navy. HeÕs accumulated, I donÕt know, three doctoral and four masters degrees.
HeÕs just incredible.
They started this publishing house so they published this
inch and a half book called, ŅDispensationalism before DarbyÓ. They documented
all of these people so thatÕs just tremendous. Bill was one of the speakers at
the conference. In fact, he spoke yesterday morning on the topic of ŅThe Rise
of Philo-Semitism and Premillennialism During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Century.Ó
HeÕs one of these guys with just this bubbly personality.
HeÕs up there and heÕs so entertaining. This could be really dry material but
because of his personality and ability to communicate, it makes him a lot of
fun. ŅPhilo-SemitismÓ is the opposite of anti-Semitism. Philo is from PHILEO,
meaning to love, so itÕs the love of the Jewish people and how that developed
in the 1600s and 1700s among English-speaking people.
A couple of papers were kind of downers. Jim Showers is the
nephew of Renald Showers. Some of you may recognize
that name if you ever read that magazine we get, ŅIsrael, My GloryÓ which is
put out by Friends of Israel.
Jim Showers is the director and president of Friends of
Israel. He is the editor of ŅIsrael, My GloryÓ. His uncle was a Dallas Th.M.,
Th.D. from the late 60s. HeÕs sort of an in-house theologian and writes a
column for them all the time. Jim had a paper called ŅThe Eroding Evangelical Support
for Israel: The Causes and the CureÓ.
Because he deals with a lot of things going on on campuses, he really has a good understanding of the
trends that are going on in the college-age and the twenty-something
evangelical Christians and how theyÕre drifting away and why theyÕre drifting
away from a support for Israel.
I sent that paper to all the deacons because his last six or
eight pages dealt with a really good analysis of the trends that are going on
among young people and some of the ways theyÕre getting information. TheyÕre
not getting information the way most of us get or got our information. If
people arenÕt reading books, it wonÕt do any good. You can publish all the
books you want to but no one is reading them, no one who is a twenty-something
is reading books. TheyÕre going to the Internet. You have to go where the
people are to communicate the truth.
I really appreciate his paper because he said that we donÕt
know the answers but we have to clearly understand the problems and the
challenges before we try to come up with any solutions.
A professor from MasterÕs Seminary, Mike Vlach,
had a good presentation on the relationship to IsraelÕs belief on the kingdom
of God which is exactly what IÕve been teaching in bits and pieces all through
our study in Matthew.
Greg Harris gave a paper on ŅDid God Fulfill Every Good
Promise? Toward a Biblical Understanding of Joshua 21:43–45.Ó ThatÕs a
passage a lot of covenant theologians and a-mils go to and say, ŅSee, Israel
conquered the land that God promised. They got it all according to Joshua 23
but he points out all the problems with that interpretation. That was very,
very good.
Joel Rosenberg, whoÕs a popular author and has written a
number of spy thrillers as well as non-fiction books, was our speaker at the
banquet. That was good on Monday night. I thought he brought an excellent
message and a reminder about something IÕve been concerned about for a while
and that is that we as supporters of Israel sometimes we want to take the
gospel to the Jews and Ņto hell with the Arabs and the Muslims.Ó
God loves the whole world, every single unbeliever. HeÕs
sent Christ to die for the Muslims as well as the Jews. There needs to be a
corrective there. IÕve said since 9-11 that the only weapon we have thatÕs going
to have any value in this war against radical Islam is this war against the
gospel. Christians need to be much more attuned to evangelism among Muslims.
One of the tensions we have and I see this as a generational
thing, younger Christians in their twenties and
thirties were only in their early teens when 9-11 happened. They donÕt remember
9-11. Some of us are old enough to remember World War II and what happened
after World War II. We are much more concerned with national security than
evangelizing our Muslim neighbors.
I feel like the younger generation, like John Williamson
here and another guy, one of my Crossfit coaches,
Alex, and heÕs involved with Muslim evangelism. That is something that needs to
be strengthened and improved among evangelicals because that is the ultimate
hope. God has brought millions of Muslims off the mission field to your
next-door mission field. We need to be much more aware of that. That was
something that Joel was emphasizing.
Mike Stallard, who is the
president of Baptist Bible Seminary, who has spoken in the Chafer Conference
before, did a critique on amillinneal theology which was very helpful. Wayne House presented a
paper on the hermeneutics of historical premillennialism.
I appreciated that because I was missing one little characteristic of historic
pre-mil, which I didnÕt quite have a handle on. That clarified that. Sometimes
thereÕs some one little thing and when you get it, youÕve got it.
Dispensational premillennialism
believes that the kingdom is a Jewish-based, Israel-based, Jerusalem-based
kingdom. Historic premillennialism rejects
dispensationalism. TheyÕre not dispensationalists. They believe Christ comes
back before the Millennium but itÕs a Christian Millennium. ItÕs not Jewish-centered.
ItÕs church-centered. ThatÕs the difference. I thought that was very helpful.
Andy Woods did a very good paper on the doctrine for the millennial
kingdom in the Old Testament understanding what is taught because a lot of amils say that the only passage that premils
can go to is Revelation 20:1–11. He walked us through all the Old
Testament promises on a future kingdom.
Then Andrew Robinson, who is a pastor in England, gave a
really good historic paper on the rise of 19th century British Christian restorationism. A lot of that IÕve taught to you in the
past. He is the pastor of a young man who is probably not as young now as when
we first met him, Paul Wilkinson, who wrote his Ph.D. on Darby and Zionism. He
has spoken several times at Pre-Trib. He does a
fantastic job and he has gone over to Israel several times in the last few
years to this Ņdark sideÓ.
We believe in Christian Zionism. They believe in Christian Palestinianism. They say Jesus was a Palestinian. They have
these murals over there where Jesus is wrapped in a little black-and-white
checkered kafia that the Palestinians wear. HeÕs
wrapped in robes of the black, green, and white of their flag and all of these
things. There are a lot of Christians who are being influenced today to dump
Israel and to love on the Palestinians.
The problem is that their theology is a form of Liberation
Theology. It is Palestinian Liberation Theology, which is a first cousin and
kissing cousin to black Liberation Theology, which is nothing more than Marxism
wrapped up in a few Bible verses. This is a huge danger.
I was just taking with Bruce about it just before class that
I thought that the three or four talks that Paul has given on this are not
encouraging. You finish listening to him and you realize that there are a lot
of really negative trends going on in the world today. You need to know what
they are. This served as a good introduction.
The references he makes to American pastors, big names of
people you hear about all the time, give you a greater understanding of whatÕs
going on in this country. You need to pay attention to those things.
Then Tommy Ice and Paul Wilkinson will be going together to
the ŅChrist at the CheckpointÓ conference they have every year at the Bethlehem
Bible College. Of course they invited me to come along. ŅRobby, please, canÕt
you come with us?Ó I said, ŅWell, IÕm a pastor and I canÕt run around the
country all the time with you guys.Ó
ThatÕs a week before the Chafer Conference so the first
speaker at the Chafer Conference is going to be Tommy Ice. HeÕs going to be
fresh off the battlefield and give us an update on what is going on with
Christian Palestinianism and the Sabeel
Center and all these people over there who are fighting against Israel. You
come back here and you realize the major players, the people, people and
pastors who influence presidents and other politicians, that the Bible doesnÕt
teach a support for Israel. They believe the Bible doesnÕt teach Christian
Zionism. We have to know the truth.
ThatÕs just a quick run through on the conference and a
summary. Now I want to get back to what weÕve been studying in 1 Peter. I
started last week looking at the doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy.
I was communicating today with another colleague from the
Pre-Trib conference who wasnÕt there this week by the
name of George Gunn. Dr. Gunn teaches at Shasta Bible College. He always
presents very well researched papers. His specialty is in the area of
hermeneutics and also in the area of prophecy. IÕm thinking about having him
come a year from this March for the Chafer Conference.
He made the comment that he had not read the paper I
referenced last week. At the end of the last class I read excerpts from Bob WilkinÕs article from his ŅGrace in FocusÓ journal. George
hadnÕt read it yet so I gave him a brief little rundown. He said, ŅI thought we
had this settled at the Chicago Council on Biblical Inerrancy.Ó
Like I said last time weÕve given that away in terms of
hermeneutics. Every generation or so we have to refight these
battles. Just like every generation has to win their freedom on the
fields of battle so every generation has to fight the battle for the Bible all
over again. We need to be well prepared.
Last time at the end I talked about several things that are
in this article and you can go back and read it. One comment someone did make.
ŅGrace in FocusÓ is the publication of the Grace Evangelical Society (GES). Just a little caveat people. Sometimes I get a little
frustrated. If I mention what someone said from the pulpit it doesnÕt mean I
agree with anything else they say other than what I quoted them as saying.
ItÕs like the prayer list. We have a few people on the
prayer list that we need to pray for because of the ministry they have. They
may have a doctrinal aberration here and there or some
other minor flaw. IÕm not giving them a 100% validation but if I put XYZ ministry on
the prayer list theyÕre doing a good job, but that doesnÕt mean that everything
they say is something I would agree with or you would agree with. We always
have to have a measure of discernment.
GES, as I pointed out
before, was a good organization founded by Bob Wilkin and Zane Hodges. About
ten or twelve years ago they started focusing on a minor aspect of some of
BobÕs and ZaneÕs theology which had to do with the fact that if you donÕt have
an assurance of your salvation or if you donÕt understand eternal security when
you believe in Jesus, then you didnÕt have saving faith.
That caused a split. It split a lot of churches. It split
George MeisingerÕs church. It split Chafer Seminary.
It split the whole organization apart over what I consider to be an erroneous
interpretation. But they do good work in many other areas. This particular
article by Bob Wilkin is very, very good and quite a warning to the churches
about the danger of the shift away from biblical inerrancy by interpreting the
Bible differently.
I pointed out last time they will, instead of looking at
Genesis 1–3 as biblical history, they look at it as poetry. If itÕs
poetry, then itÕs not communicating literal history. I have problems with that
but in the sidebar on one of the pages [go to the website and download the
article to see it], thereÕs a reference to a survey that was done and the
website it comes from [not a good website called religioustolerance.org who are
intolerant of you and me, no I mean you and I].
Let me correct myself. Let me get on a rabbit trail. I am so
tired of people who canÕt understand that I is the
nominative and me is the dative. When you say something to me, just think about
it. ItÕs you and I and then youÕre going to make that a direct object, just
drop out the other person. Would you say he did that to I? He invited Jim and
I. I hear that from news people. Everyone is doing that now. I heard that twenty
times this week. You say John invited you and me. If you drop out John and say
he invited me, youÕll get it. Now youÕll know the right way to say it. No
matter how many people are in there as a direct object, youÕll still get it
right.
It just grates on me. The fact I said that a minute ago
bothers me because we pick that up from hearing other literate people talk on
the news. End of rant.
The religious tolerance people do not like us. TheyÕre
intolerant of us. This is from a survey they have on their website. ItÕs called
1987 [28 years ago]. WeÕve gotten better, havenÕt we? More conservative? More biblical? No, just the opposite, if it was this bad
twenty-eight years ago, how bad do you think it is today?
According to this survey, ten thousand clergy were asked if
they believed the Scriptures were the inspired, inerrant Word of God in faith,
history, and secular matters. Ninety five percent of Episcopalians said no. The
other day someone mentioned someone who was going to a Bible study in an
Episcopal Church. I said, ŅJust count on it. Episcopals
are wrong.Ó They werenÕt going to an Episcopal-based Bible study so that was
better.
Ninety five percent of Episcopalian clergy do not believe
the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Eighty seven percent of Methodists do
not believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Eighty two percent of
Presbyterians do not the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Seventy seven
percent of American Lutherans and sixty seven percent of American Baptists do
not believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God.
That was twenty-eight years ago. I would bet that ninety
nine percent of Episcopalians do not believe it and the others have probably
bumped up five, six, or seven percent. You saw the other day that a lot of
evangelicals have problems because they try to use the empiricism of modern
science and modern understanding as their presuppositional
base for truth. Then when the Bible comes up with a young earth age, it doesnÕt
fit the old earth claims of modern science.
Well, modern science must be right so we must figure out
some other way to understand Genesis 1–11. On and on it goes. Jonah
swallowed by a large fish, thatÕs just a tough one to handle. Even though there
are empirical examples.
There are testimonies from whalers in the 19th century of
whalers who had fallen off their ship and gone into the drink. They were swallowed by fish or a whale but I donÕt think
itÕs a whale. From what I understand whales have really narrow throats so I
donÕt think a whale could swallow a man but some other large fish could.
TheyÕve eventually caught the fish, cut the fish open, and
the person has come out alive. So the story of Jonah is not beyond reason. ItÕs
just beyond the experience or the reason of small-minded intellectuals.
Since weÕre in 1 Peter 1 we see all of this terminology in 1
Peter 1:10–12 that speaks of and takes us to the doctrine of inspiration
and inerrancy. ŅOf this salvation the prophets have inquired.Ó
How does the fact that they have to study the Bible, whatÕs
been revealed to them, and search it carefully, how does that relate to
inspiration? They prophesied. What exactly is that? How did that happen?
They were searching what the Spirit of Christ who was in
them was indicating. In verse 12, ŅTo them it was revealed by the Holy Spirit.Ó
The claim of the Bible is that this is not like any other book. This was
revealed to us via God the Holy Spirit.
It is a book of divine origin, not human origin and
therefore we are to understand it as being radically different from any other
kind of book. There are other religious books that make claims of divine origin
but there are radical distinctions between them.
Read the Bible through about ten times in one year so you
really get a good understanding of the rhythm, the beat, and the tone and the
language of the Bible. Then read the book of Mormon. Or read the Bhagavan Iti or read the Koran.
Drink a lot of coffee before you start reading the Koran.
I tried to read it a few years ago. It starts off with the
longest chapters and works to shortest. ItÕs arranged
by length of chapter. ItÕs not chronological. By the time I got through chapter
one I had had three naps. It is hard to read. It is very, very confusing.
These books, like the book of Mormon and the Koran, not the others
I mentioned, are written by one person at one time. Mohammed was illiterate but
he allegedly memorized it and then later it was written down. But the Bible is
a book written over a period of 2,000 years, maybe 2,500 years, by at least 40
different writers who came from three different continents, and had a lot of
different careers, and training, and background.
You have Abraham who was a merchant, a farmer, and a
herdsman. You have Amos who was basically a sheep breeder and a fig picker.
Then you have Peter, James, and John who were fisherman. And you have Moses who
was trained to rule over the greatest empire of the time.
They have a breadth of different educations and backgrounds.
Yet they write on some of the most controversial topics that have ever been
discussed in all of human history. Even if we took sixty people from this
church and we all wrote on some key doctrines together, we would disagree.
These guys donÕt disagree and thatÕs because thereÕs a primary Author, God the
Holy Spirit, Who is breathing the Word of God out through them.
That is the meaning of inspiration. ItÕs really outspiration. God outspires the
Word, outbreathes the Word, through the authors of
Scripture.
Last time I gave you the lengthy definition here. I think is
from our doctrinal statement. It says that inspiration means that God the Holy
Spirit so supernaturally directed the human writers of Scripture, that without
waiving their human intelligence, vocabulary, individuality, literacy style,
personality, personal feelings, or any other human factor, His complete and
coherent message to mankind was recorded with perfect accuracy in the original
languages of Scripture, the very words bearing the authority of divine
authorship.
If you didnÕt get all of that written down, donÕt worry.
WeÕre going to break it down section by section so we can really understand
what that means. Some of the verses I put up here are secondary verses for
inspiration. John 10:35, Matthew 5:18, 2 Timothy
3:16–17 [primary], 2 Peter 1:21 [primary]. Those two are the key
ones. Then 1 Corinthians 2:14–16 and a host of others.
So letÕs look at these primary ones tonight. I put up 2
Timothy 3:15–17 because we have to understand a little bit about the context
here. We frequently heard ŅAll Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that
the man of God may be equipped, thoroughly furnished for every good work.Ó
The verse that precedes that is equally significant. Paul is
writing to Timothy. What do we do in Bible study? Who wrote it? Who are they
writing it to? When did they write it? Why did they write it?
This is 2 Timothy, the last epistle that Paul writes before
he dies. HeÕs writing it to his young protˇgˇe, Timothy. These are his last
instructions to Timothy. HeÕs reminding Timothy of his spiritual heritage. He
says, ŅFrom childhood you have known the sacred writings.Ó He was a child
before or maybe about the time that the Lord Jesus died. He was a child who
grew up in a home. His father and grandfather are not mentioned. HeÕs brought
up probably in a single-parent home with his mother and grandmother who are
believers.
They have taught him the Old Testament, the Torah. They
didnÕt know any New Testament yet. They didnÕt even know the gospels. They just
knew the Old Testament and the Old Testament gospel that Messiah would come and
through Him all would be justified. They believed in the Messianic promise of
the Old Testament. They got that from the sacred writings.
What Paul tells us here is that Ņfrom childhood you have
known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to
salvation through faith.Ó So he could be saved and he was saved as an Old
Testament saint through the reading of the Old Testament.
The sacred writings are the focal point of the chapter. That
would be Old Testament Scripture, the thirty nine
books in the English Old Testament, twenty-two or twenty-four books, depending
on how you count it in the Hebrew Scripture. ŅThey are able to give you the
wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Jesus the Christ.Ó
Then Paul says, ŅAll Scripture.Ó When he says all Scripture
at this point he is primarily talking about the Old Testament. About two-thirds of the New Testament has been written at this time,
maybe a little bit more. But primarily what he is
talking about in context is the Old Testament writings.
It wouldnÕt exclude New Testament writings but thatÕs contextually
his primary focus. ŅAll Scripture is given by inspiration of God.Ó ThatÕs this
Greek word THEOPNEUSTOS which means
God-breathed. From THEOS meaning God and PNEUSTOS from the
word for breath.
God breathes it out. This isnÕt inspiration like you may
talk about George Frideric Handel being inspired when
he wrote ŅThe MessiahÓ. You may speak of Michelangelo being inspired as he
painted the Sistine Chapel. ThatÕs not using the word in the same way the
Scriptures used this word.
This is the unique, distinct ministry of God breathing His
Word out of His mind into the mind of the writers of Scripture. Then they
exhaled it through writing the Scripture. So God is the Source of the
Scripture.
Since God is the Source of the Scripture, itÕs profitable
for teaching, for correcting us, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness
that the man of God [any believer] may be complete. This is the doctrine of the
sufficiency of Scripture. That means you donÕt need anything else other than
Scripture to be a complete, mature believer.
It doesnÕt matter what kind of problems youÕve had in your
background. It doesnÕt matter what horrible things happened in your background.
It doesnÕt matter the fact that you may have been some sort of criminal,
someone who was abusive or had a background where you were abused. All of that
is forgiven and cleansed by the grace of God.
We can overcome all of that through the Scriptures alone the
Bible says. You donÕt need ten-step, twelve-step, thirty-step, fifty-step
programs, and a host of pills. There are some things you may need that are
definitely and specifically biological that need to be addressed that way. Most
of the stuff that people go to today is when they have an emotional hangnail and
they want to take five drugs for it.
The Scripture says no, what you need is the Word of God and
to trust God and to do what the Word of God says to do. It doesnÕt mean itÕs
going to be easy or simple or overnight. A lot of people misunderstand that. Spiritual
growth still takes time because you have to learn the Word of God and practice
it.
Then at the end it says, that because all
Scripture is breathed out by God you may be thoroughly equipped. The
word there in the Greek is an intensified use of the word used over in
Ephesians 4:11–12 that says that the gift of apostle and prophet and
evangelist and pastor-teacher are to equip the saints to do the work of
ministry.
The word thatÕs used there for equip is an intensified form
here because itÕs the Word of God that the gifted ones in the church are using
to train people. ItÕs the Word of God that can do that. We have to trust the
Word of God.
So the word that we have is THEOPNEUSTOS which describes
the ministry of God the Holy Spirit specifically. The first part of our
definition said that ŅGod the Holy Spirit so
supernaturally directed the human writers of ScriptureÓ. The point that weÕre
making is that itÕs the province of God the Father as the Architect and Planner
and Visionary of human history to oversee everything.
It is the role of the Second Person of the Trinity who was
the Ņgeneral construction managerÓ who oversaw the creation and is the Redeemer
who will provide the redemptive work of salvation.
ItÕs the role of God the Holy Spirit to reveal the Father to
His creation.
That falls within the purview of His area of responsibility.
WeÕll look at some of these passages later.
God the Holy Spirit is emphasized in verses like 2 Samuel
23:2–3, Mark 12:36, Acts 1:16, 28:25; John
14:26, 1 Thessalonians 4:2, 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 12, and 14. God the Holy
Spirit is the One that reveals Scripture to us.
HereÕs a central passage for this, 2 Peter 1:20–21.
ŅKnowing this first that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private
interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God
spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.Ó
That seems pretty clear in the English, doesnÕt it? Right?
You read that and got a clear grasp of it? Maybe not.
This is a great verse. What does it mean starting off saying, Ņknowing this
firstÓ? ItÕs probably a causal participle coming off the previous verse.
But that word for ŅfirstÓ is really significant. ItÕs the
word PROTOS. That means something that is first, something
that is prominent, or something that is foundational.
What I believe this is emphasizing and IÕve just worked
through this when I was talking with George Gunn. I shared my insight with him
and he said, ŅI never thought about that. YouÕre exactly right.Ó
PROTOS refers to the
presupposition. This is the presuppositional
foundation of all knowledge. It is the Word of God as the inerrant, infallible
Word of God as revealed by God, the Holy Spirit.
This isnÕt the second thing you should know or the third
thing you should know. This is the foundational thing you should know because
all other knowledge is built upon this.
I read to you a statement last week from a guy who was in
the same class as I was at Dallas [Theological] Seminary. HeÕs gone on and done
quite a bit of excellent Greek work but heÕs done some stuff I wouldnÕt agree
with. His name is Dan Wallace. A statement here quoted by Bob Wilkin in his
article, Wallace said, ŅIf our starting point is embracing propositional truths
about the nature of Scripture rather than personally embracing Jesus Christ as
our Lord and King, weÕll be on that slippery slope and weÕll take a lot of
folks down with us.Ó
HereÕs the problem. He has characterized our position as
saying our starting point is embracing propositional truths about the nature of
Scripture. Our starting point is rather embracing Scripture. HeÕs
misrepresented it there. ThatÕs the only way we can know Jesus, from the
Scripture.
Not one person IÕve ever met has had a personal encounter
with Jesus. IÕve heard people say that. They ŅmetÓ Jesus. I always love it when
I hear someone say, ŅWell, I found Jesus.Ó I didnÕt know He was lost. ŅI ŅmetÓ
Jesus.Ó Really? I thought He was just localized at the right hand of the Father
in the Church Age. I didnÕt know He was walking around. Obviously what they
really mean is that they met Him through Scripture.
ThatÕs the only way they can meet Jesus. ThatÕs the only way
we can have a personal relationship with Jesus is through the propositional
truths of Scripture. And yet we live in a fuzzy-thinking world today where
people think that somehow they can have a relationship with God and Jesus
without it being mediated through the Word of God.
Once you start buying into that kind of fuzzy-headed
thinking, then itÕs real easy for someone to trick you into thinking that you
donÕt really need to believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture.
Now this verse begins with seeing the Holy Spirit is the
Author of Scripture, recognizing that the way He does it is through these
propositions. Propositions are a technical, philosophical term meaning
basically what you learned in 7th grade as an indicative sentence: a statement
about reality. For example, itÕs snowing outside. That may be true or false and
you can verify it or falsify it, which means itÕs a proposition.
If I tell you to go to the store you canÕt verify or falsify
that which means itÕs not a proposition. ItÕs a command. If I say what time is
it? Is that a true statement or a false statement? Neither. ItÕs a question.
Only an indicative statement, a statement about fact, can be proved true or
false. ThatÕs a proposition in philosophy.
ThatÕs what it means when we read about the Scripture being
propositional revelation. It can be demonstrated to be true or false. So the
Word of God is revealed to us as being propositional revelation. TheyÕre normal
sentences which can be objectively evaluated and
validated.
When we look at this verse itÕs difficult in the Greek. The
first thing we learn is that God the Holy Spirit, as weÕve seen, has a
responsibility for overseeing the communication and the inscripturation
of divine revelation. ThatÕs clear when it says, Ņholy men of God spoke as they
were moved by the Holy Spirit.Ó
The second thing is we have to understand something about
the process of inspiration, inscripturation which I
had to put into my Microsoft dictionary because they kept telling me it was
misspelled just because theyÕre ignorant, and foundational which is that first
word, Ņknowing this firstÓ. ThatÕs the priority.
This word is PROTOS. Going back
to Classical Greek in Greek logic this described the primary foundational unprovable propositions on which all philosophy or all
thinking was built. You get down to primary assumptions which
canÕt be evaluated or validated, theyÕre just taken by faith.
In the Old Testament it was a word that would refer to
something that preceded everything else. In some cases it would refer to that
which was preeminent. It was not being described in a succession or an order.
It was like Jesus is the PROTOTOKOS, that PROTOS is the
beginning. He is the first of GodÕs creation, not first in order. He is the
preeminent One.
ThatÕs one way in which PROTOS can be
taken. In the New Testament the word has the same general range of meaning as
it does in the Old Testament. It can be first in time, first in a spatial
sense, or first in a succession or order, or first in designating rank or
office.
With reference to knowledge it still goes back to that
classical Greek sense that this is our presupposition. If youÕre going to learn
anything, whatever you learn is built upon some foundation. It may be
empiricism. It may be rationalism. It may be mysticism or a combination of
those three. For it to be true it has to be built on revelation.
That revelation must be true. If itÕs a false revelation
like the Koran or the book of Mormon or the Bhagavan Iti then itÕs going to have elements of truth in it but
itÕs not going to be true truth. ItÕs not going to be absolute truth.
When we look at this the literal translation is what IÕve
given you here because itÕs a little convoluted in the Greek. Literally it
reads, every prophecy of Scripture as opposed to no
prophecy of Scripture has to do with how we have to convert certain Greek
phrases into the negative to understand what they meant. Every prophecy in
Scripture does not come about from its own explanation or interpretation.
In order for that to make sense, in English we have to
rewrite it as no prophecy of Scripture comes about from its or his own
explanation/interpretation. In other words the prophet is the one who is
working. No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation because
prophecy never came by the will of man.
If you go back to 2 Peter 1:19 it talks about the prophet so
itÕs the prophetÕs interpretation. So it should be understood and translated
that no prophecy of Scripture is of his own. The trouble you have with the
grammar here is that the word IDIOS, which is
where we get our word ŅidiotÓ. The word IDIOS there is
oneÕs own. ItÕs a feminine scripture but so is Scripture and so is prophecy but
if you go back to 2 Peter 1:19 we have Ņthe prophetic Word confirmed which you
would do well to heed as light which shines in a dark place until the day dawns
and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first that no prophecy
[a feminine word] of his own is of the prophetÕs own interpretation. The point
is that he doesnÕt generate it.
ThereÕs lots of discussion on this in various commentaries
but they all seem to agree that no prophecy in Scripture derives from the
prophetÕs own interpretation. He doesnÕt generate it. PeterÕs aim was to deny
that the prophets themselves were the source from which their message
originated. The prophecies came from God. They were not inventions of the
prophets themselves.
ThatÕs expanded on in the next verse, verse 21, ŅFor
prophecy never came by the will of man.Ó WhatÕs interesting here is the word in
the Greek translated ŅcameÓ and translated Ņwere movedÓ here [reference
underlines on Slide 13]. ItÕs the same Greek word. ItÕs PHERO. By
translating it with such different language you miss the point.
Peter is saying that no prophecy was carried or was brought
by the will of man. HeÕs repeating more clearly what he just said in the
previous verse. ŅBut holy men of God spoke as they were moved [or carried] by
the Holy Spirit.Ó
Let me show you a verse that uses this same word that gives
us a little insight as to what it means. This is in Acts 27:17 when Paul is
riding on the ship that is going to be shipwrecked. It says, ŅWhen they had
taken it on board, they used cables to undergird the ship; and fearing lest
they should run aground on the Syrtis Sands, they
struck sail and so were driven.Ó ThatÕs the word PHERO. They are
driven by the wind.
The wind, now since they struck the sails, is going to drive
them wherever the wind wants to take them. They have nothing to say about it.
ThatÕs the idea, that God the Holy Spirit is so driving them, directing them,
and supervising them that theyÕre going to write what God wants them to write.
HeÕs not going to override their educational background, their individual
personality, their training, or any of those things.
Let me just give you some interesting examples of some
Scriptures that talk about this. 2 Samuel 23:2–3, ŅThe Spirit of the Lord
spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue. The God of Israel said, The Rock of
Israel spoke to me: ŌHe who rules over men can be just, ruling in the fear of
God.Õ Ó [David says this.] Notice that not only does this tell us it is God the
Holy Spirit but itÕs emphasizing that itÕs His Word singular. The inspiration
extends to the very individual words that are used.
ItÕs not that the ideas of Scripture are inspired. ItÕs the
very words themselves are breathed out by God. It is God who speaks. It is the
righteous, just, holy, omnipotent, omnipresent God who speaks.
Mark 12:36, Jesus said, ŅFor David himself said by the Holy
Spirit:Ó So here heÕs attributing what David said in Psalm 110 to the Holy
Spirit.
Acts 1:16, ŅMen and brethren, this Scripture had to be
fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke by the mouth of DavidÓ [dual authorship
of Scripture, the human author and the divine Author].
Now here are some interesting passages
which IÕll close with. 1 Timothy 5:18 reads,
ŅFor the Scripture says, ŌYou shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the
grain,Õ Ó. ThatÕs a quotation from Deuteronomy 25:4 which reads, ŅYou shall not
muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.Ó
What did he call that? He called it Scripture. The point is
that the New Testament clearly identifies what is Scripture. It connects not
only what is an Old Testament passage here [Deuteronomy 25:4] but it connects
it as equally authoritative with a statement from Matthew 10:10 that the
laborer is worthy of his wages.
In Matthew 10:10 it says, ŅFor a worker is worthy of his
food.Ó He changed the wording a little bit. He could do that because God the
Holy Spirit is the Author. HeÕs combining an Old Testament passage from the
Torah with a New Testament passage as being equally authoritative and equally
from God.
1 Corinthians 2:10 Paul writes, ŅBut God has revealed them
to us through His Spirit.Ó In 1 Corinthians 2:13 Ņthe Holy Spirit teachesÓ us
through these words and 1 Corinthians 14:37, ŅIf anyone thinks himself to be a
prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you
are the commandments of the Lord.Ó
Paul is saying here that what he is writing has equal
authority to the Torah, the commandments of God.
What weÕve seen in this first part of the definition is that
ŅGod the Holy Spirit so supernaturally directed the human writers of
Scripture.Ó WeÕll stop there and next time weÕll talk about the human writers
of Scripture.
This is the point. What does the Scripture say about itself?
It claims again and again and again to be the very Word of God. ItÕs not just
that the ideas are inspired or the thoughts are inspired but the precise
verbiage.
WeÕll see next time this will extend down to plurals and
singulars, present tenses versus past tenses. Those are equally significant.
Closing Prayer
ŅFather, Thank You that we can have a study like this to
look at your Word and come to understand that this is a supernatural book. It
was not revealed so that men could just add their own ideas to it but it has
been revealed by You.
It has been protected in its revealing by God the Holy
Spirit from error. It has been protected in its transmission down through the
ages so that we can be assured of its accuracy in the original languages.
Though there may be a few things that got changed they
affect nothing in terms of content or theology or doctrine but simply tertiary
things such as word order or spelling, things of that nature.
Thank You that we can trust Your Word because then we know
that whatever we face in life, the solution is found in Your Word. It is Your
Word and Your grace and Your power that is sufficient
to enable us in every circumstance in life.
We pray that we might have the strength of faith to trust You. In ChristÕs name. Amen.Ó