Inspiration: The God-Breathed Scriptures

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All right, if you would, take out the notes that were handed to you before we began.
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Hopefully everyone received a set of notes.
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And also turn in your Bibles to 2 Timothy 3, verse 16.
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It's interesting if you go through the New Testament and just look at all of the 3 16s.
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You know, obviously we know John 3, verse 16 has a powerful history in its use in teaching and what it's meant.
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But there's other very interesting 3 16s.
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I've always thought it would be an interesting study just to look at those.
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But 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 is one that regards the focus of Scripture.
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And one that we should know and be able to look to when we're talking about the subject of the Bible itself.
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And what it claims to be.
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As those of you who have been coming know and those of you who haven't been may not know.
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We are in a study of apologetics.
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Apologetics, as you probably remember, is defending the faith.
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Apologeo in the Greek means to make a defense.
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It's where we get our word apology.
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In the English, rendering normally means to say that we're sorry about something.
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But the original language wasn't about saying that you were sorry.
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It was about making your case.
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Saying why you did what you did.
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And what we've done in this study of apologetics is we've sort of taken an offshoot.
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And I do this sometimes.
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I get in these long series of lessons and I end up doing a little mini-series within a series.
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And what we're doing right now in this study of apologetics is we're looking at the subject of how we got the Bible.
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How we got the Bible.
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Because the Christian faith is based on what is written in the Bible.
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We can argue that the Christian faith is based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
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But then you have to take a step back and ask the question, where do we know about those things? From where do we get the information about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ? From where do we find out about His birth, His death, His burial, His resurrection? The very heart of the Gospel is found in the Word of God.
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It's a collection of 66 books written over a period of about 1500 years.
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It was written by over 40 different authors.
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And it contains, in its original writing, three different languages.
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And understanding the Bible, where it came from, where we got it, how it came to us, and how it has been preserved over the last 2000 years is vital to apologetics.
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Because I'm going to tell you something.
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My wife and I had this conversation in the car earlier.
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In our attempt to bring the Gospel into the world, we are much less likely to run into an atheist as we are likely to run into what I have dubbed an a-religionist.
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See, an atheist is a person who says there's no God.
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Or that they don't believe that God exists.
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But we were talking today, because we had met a man and introduced ourselves to him.
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And we were talking a little bit after we left the conversation.
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And I said, I don't think that he doesn't believe in God.
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I think that he doesn't care about any type of religion.
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And some people think that's good.
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Because a lot of people, you know, a few years ago, it's not about religion, it's about relationship.
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And that's great for a bumper sticker.
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But the reality is, God has given a standard as to how he is to be worshipped.
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God's given a standard as to what it means to believe in him.
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And yes, it is about a relationship with Jesus Christ.
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But James tells us in his book that true and good religion is this.
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The word religion in the Bible is actually used in a positive way, not a negative way.
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And there's all kinds of false religions.
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There's only one right one, and it's the Jesus Christ religion.
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And it is a religion.
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You say, I don't like using that word.
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Well, call it whatever you want.
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But what happens today is people say, I don't want to worship God according to his way.
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I want to worship my way.
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And that's what I'm calling a religionist.
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They just have decided they're going to do it their way.
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And guess what? That's not the way God works.
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You know, the guys who tried to do it their own way were named Nadab and Abihu.
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And you read Leviticus 10.
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And it says they offered up a fire to God that was unauthorized.
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That's what it says in the ESV.
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But in the King James, it says it was a strange fire.
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And what did God say? He said nothing.
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He burned them to death.
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And Moses' response to his father, their father, Aaron, was to those who approached me, I must be regarded as holy.
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That's the heart of the matter.
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The heart of the matter is when we approach God.
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We must remember he is holy.
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And he's the one who sets the standard, not us.
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I heard a comedian one time.
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He said, well, my sanctum sanctorum, I set the cover charge.
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My sanctum sanctorum, I set the cover charge.
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What he was saying is when it comes to religion, I set the standard.
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I get to determine what is and what isn't.
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That isn't the way it works.
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It's just not the way it works.
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It certainly sounds very empowering.
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But all it does is just make us more and more a child of hell.
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So, kind of got a little off there.
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But during this series, what we're going to be looking at is eight different aspects of how we got the Bible.
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Because understanding the Bible, understanding how we got it, understanding that our faith, if you want to call it a faith, religion, whatever you want to call it, is based on what's in here.
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And there's eight parts.
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Last week we looked at Revelation.
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What is Revelation? Not the book of Revelation, but Revelation itself.
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And if you weren't here, I encourage you to listen to that.
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And then we're going to inspiration.
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That's tonight.
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And then canonization, transmission, textual criticism, translation, interpretation, and application.
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That's the eight parts of this series.
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It's going to be relatively long.
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Because some of these weeks are going to take more than a single week.
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I do want to make mention also, and this is out of all fairness, because there's nothing original.
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The Bible says there's nothing new under the sun.
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But anytime I do a series like this where I'm drawing heavily from the work of other men, I like to mention that.
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And some of the outline we're using comes from Professor Michael Vlach, V-L-A-C-H.
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And I actually have permission from him to use some of his material.
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I've spoken to him in years past about this, because I've taught on this before.
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And I worked on a seminary series based on this.
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And I was using some of his material.
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So just so you know, he's one.
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Dr.
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James White is another.
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And of course, Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul will be coming up at times.
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You'll hear me quoting him.
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Dr.
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Norman Geisler and Dr.
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Michael Kruger.
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In fact, we may even watch a video from Dr.
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Kruger.
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Because he has, in the last, probably last ten years, written some of the most important information on the canon of the New Testament, the history of the New Testament.
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And he has some of the greatest stuff out there right now.
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So if you are interested in going further, anything by Michael Kruger, I would recommend.
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It's great, great stuff.
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All right.
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So the question tonight is on the subject of inspiration.
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What do we mean when we say the Bible is inspired by God? So when we say the Bible is inspired, what do we mean? Well, let's look first under heading one.
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The definition and meaning of inspiration.
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In your Bible, 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, it says that very important passage that many of you probably remember by now, because we have looked at this before.
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All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
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Then verse 17 follows that by saying that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
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Now I have a question.
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Does anybody in here have a King James Bible? I thought you might, brother.
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I'm going to walk closer so I can hear you.
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Would you read 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 in the King James? There's a reason why I want him to do this.
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I could probably quote it, but I'd rather hear it from...
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No, I'm sorry.
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On the spot Bible drill.
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Okay, 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 says in the King James Bible.
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All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.
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Thank you.
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The doctrine of inspiration finds its source, at least doctrinally, definitionally, in the King James rendering of this passage.
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I personally believe that the word inspiration is not the best word to describe what we're talking about here.
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However, it is the word that has become so attached to this doctrine that you can't run from it and you can't really ignore it.
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But I wanted to point out the fact that the King James version has had so much influence on our language that this very doctrine is based on the way it's written in this text.
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Most of you know that the Greek word here is not inspiration.
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The Greek word here is theanoustos.
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And some people do pronounce the P in that, so they would say theopneustos, but I've always thought that sounds a little funny.
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The word theopneustos or theanoustos is a combination, two Greek words.
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The first word, theos, is the word that we know, gos.
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It should be God.
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And pneumos, meaning breath.
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And it's actually where we get the term pneumatic.
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When you think of a pneumatic tool or a pneumatic tire, anything that has to do with air or wind, that's where we get the word pneumatic.
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It's from the word pneumos.
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So when it says, this is actually not a word that's found in classical Greek.
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This is a word that we believe the Apostle Paul created.
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And he does that.
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There are several words that are in the New Testament that are found nowhere else.
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And they're compound words.
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And it's God, you could say the Apostle Paul created it, the Holy Spirit created it because he is the ultimate author of Scripture.
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And the Apostle Paul was used in creation of this word.
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Theanoustos, meaning literally God breathed.
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To speak about inspiration in the King James is to speak about God as the source of this word.
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All Scripture, and the ESV again reads as this, all Scripture is breathed out by God.
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And again, even that is not necessarily a literal, but a figurative way of saying that all Scripture comes from the mouth of God.
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All Scripture comes from God.
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Now, next week we're going to talk, well, it won't be next week.
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It won't be two weeks because we've got the thing on the 14th.
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Maybe two, I don't know, we'll figure it out.
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But the next time we're here, we're going to talk about canonicity and how we know that there should be 66 books and not 64, and there shouldn't be 67.
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What about that Gospel of Thomas? That's a big question, you know.
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What about the Gospel of Judas or Mary Magdalene, right? They all wrote a Gospel too.
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No, they didn't, but we'll learn about that.
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But that, when it says all Scripture, Scripture there actually, in this context, is referring to the Old Testament.
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Because at the time of the writing of 2 Timothy, only a portion of the New Testament had been written, and identifying it as Scripture, some, yes, had recognized it as Scripture, but Paul is specifically at this point talking about the Old Testament, and I would say that what he says about the Old Testament also applies to the New Testament.
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We're going to talk about that more in the weeks to come.
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But the argument here is simply this.
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He is talking specifically about certain books that had been recognized by God's people as coming from God.
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All books are not from God.
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I know that you say, that's such a simple thing to say, but it's really profound, because you'll hear people say, well, I was inspired to write this.
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Or they'll say, I was inspired to create this.
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And that's why I don't like the word inspiration.
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Because the word inspiration has been so made so simplistic that it's lost its meaning.
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There are only 66 books that God has been gracious enough to give His people, some very short, some very long, but all contained in the book that we now call the Holy Bible.
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That is all the Scripture that there is, and that's all that has been given by God for instruction, reproof, for training in righteousness, and all those things that it says.
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This is the Word of God.
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And so when we talk about inspiration, the meaning of inspiration, the definition of inspiration, that means those books that came from God.
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Those books that preceded from the mouth of God.
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I'm going to read, this is from Paul Innes, he's a theologian.
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He says, Inspiration may be defined as the Holy Spirit superintending over the writers of Scripture, so that while writing according to their own styles and personalities, the result was God's Word written, authoritative, trustworthy, and free from error in the original autographs.
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That's what we mean by inspiration.
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This is God's Word.
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Come from God.
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That's what it is.
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And there is a difference, and this moves on to the second part of your notes, there's a difference between inspiration and revelation.
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Revelation concerns the origin and giving of truth, while inspiration relates to the reception and the recording of truth.
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I want to quote Norman Geisler, Inspiration is the means God used to achieve His revelation in the Bible.
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Inspiration involves man in an active sense, whereas revelation is solely the activity of God.
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Inspiration as a total process includes both the prophet and the product of His pen.
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So again, it's this.
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Inspiration is when it actually makes it to the page.
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Are there things that God has revealed that we know not of? I think the answer has to be yes.
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Because I don't think everything that God ever revealed was written down.
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Because even at the end of John, it says that if anyone were to try to write down everything that Jesus did, there wouldn't be enough pages to contain all of those things.
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We have specifically the inspired Word of God, which contains what we need, and the information that we're supposed to have.
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You know, Paul wrote an entire book that we don't even have.
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He wrote the first Corinthians, the first Corinthians we have is the second letter he wrote to them.
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He wrote an entire letter before that, and he talks about it in first Corinthians.
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I don't believe that work was inspired by God, because if it was, it'd be in here.
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We don't have any copy, we don't even know what it says.
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We know it existed because he referenced it.
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But we don't know anything about it, because it wasn't a part of God's inspired Word.
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It wasn't a part of the Theanostos Scriptures.
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So, we need to understand that inspiration is found, or Theanostos, the Word of God, is found here.
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There are revelations that God has given to men, but the inspiration of the Word of God is what we have in this book.
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And just for the sake of, I don't want to make an argument, I don't believe that God still gives revelation today.
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We talked about this a little bit last week.
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I think that God intervenes in life today.
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I do think that God intervenes in people's lives today, and I do think that there are miraculous interventions, such as what we talked about with Scott Phillips, when he went to the Indonesian people there in the Tao tribe, and there was almost miraculous things that were happening.
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That's powerful, and you can't just go full and deny those things.
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But revelation as God speaking, the Bible says very clearly, in various times and in various ways, God spoke to our fathers in the past through the prophets, but is now, has spoken through his Son.
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And we have that contained in the New Testament, the Word of God.
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I don't believe that when somebody stands up and says, God spoke to me, I think it's a dangerous thing.
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I think it's really, really dangerous when people say it with the authority of the prophetic word.
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Like, I don't know if you know this, Benny Hinn, I have the recording, he said that Fidel Castro was going to die in the 90s, and Cuba was going to be visited of God.
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He said this in the early 90s.
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He said God told him Fidel Castro was going to die in the 90s, and Cuba was going to be visited of God.
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You know what happened in the Old Testament when a prophet got it wrong? Because it was revelation from God, and if it was wrong, it wasn't from God, and thus you are a false prophet.
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And false prophets dealt with the prophet's dilemma.
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If what you say doesn't come to pass, that's the end of that.
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We don't really deal with the prophet's dilemma anymore.
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But I still think it's a dilemma when people come out and make great claims.
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I heard one guy, when Donald Trump won the presidency last year, I heard one guy, he was praising God because this young prophet had prophesied that Donald Trump was going to be the president.
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And I said, now, wait, wait, I am certain there's somebody out there who prophesied that Hillary was going to win, and I'm almost certain that he had a 50-50 shot of getting that prophecy right.
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Needless to say, he wasn't impressed with his prophetic gift.
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All right, I'm getting beside myself.
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Let's move on to the elements of inspiration because this is where the rubber meets the road.
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This is very important to understand in apologetics.
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When it comes to inspiration, as we have defined that as coming from God, the word of God coming from God, there is the human element and there is the divine element.
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The human element and the divine element.
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Actually, I did that backwards.
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In your notes, it's the divine first and then the human.
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When I talk about the divine element, we've already talked about this.
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The primary person in the act of inspiration is God.
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He is inspiring the word of God to be written.
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But he did not do this independent of humans.
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He did not do this independent of people.
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That's why I say the human element must be considered.
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The Bible comes from God through men.
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Remember what we talked about a few months ago? We were talking about apologetics.
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People often say, I don't believe the Bible was written by men.
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I say, okay, the Bible was written by men.
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I don't disagree that the Bible was written by men.
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I say, do you believe it was in your textbooks? They say, yeah, I believe it was in my textbooks.
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I say, that was written by men too.
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If you're arguing that just because something is written by a man, it has to be wrong, then you can't believe your textbooks either.
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The question is not whether or not the Bible was written by men.
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The question is, what was the source of their information? Is their information true? Is their information accurate? Does it represent truth as defined by God, who is himself the source of all truth? Yes, there's a human element.
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But that human element does not introduce error.
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That's the implication.
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The implication is that because humans were involved, there must be error involved.
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And that takes us back to the inspiration definition.
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It came from God as its source, and thus God is the one who is superintending.
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I love that word, superintending.
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Because that's what he's doing.
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He's having Paul write to the Romans, and he's superintending what is being written to ensure that it is accurate to what he wants them to know.
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And ultimately what he wants us to know.
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As they wrote under the direction of the Holy Spirit, they used their own individual styles.
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This is why, and this is key.
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You can read Romans, and then read Hebrews, and read the Gospel of John, and you can tell there were three different writers.
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Especially if you read the Greek.
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Hebrews is written in a very classical, very educated Greek.
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John is written very simply.
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In fact, it's the one that they use to teach Greek in seminary because it is so basic in its language.
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In Arche Ein Halagos.
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In the beginning was the word.
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Very simple language.
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Paul, educated as a Pharisee, but wrote at a level that people could understand.
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That's why I don't believe Paul wrote Hebrews.
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Not because I don't think he could.
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I just don't believe he did.
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I think maybe Apollos or Barnabas.
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Maybe even Luke.
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There's an argument for all three.
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Possibly it's the author of Hebrews.
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Because if you read Luke, Luke is educated as well.
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He's a doctor.
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And he reads different than John.
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And what I'm saying is there's a human element involved.
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God is using the instrument.
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He's using the hands and the minds of these men to proclaim his truth.
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And so is there a divine element? Absolutely.
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It's the word of God.
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Is there a human element? Absolutely.
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This is why we read differently from the different authors.
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I'm going to read again from Dr.
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Geisler.
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He says, In inspiration, God is the primary cause, and the prophets are the secondary causes.
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Thus the divine influence did not restrict human activity, but rather enabled the human authors to communicate the divine message accurately.
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Now, I hasten to point out, have you ever seen or ever heard of something called automatic writing? Where people will go into a trance, and they'll just start doing this kind of thing with their hand, and they'll put a piece of paper in front of them, and they'll start writing something out, and they'll say this is a message from beyond.
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It happens in medium circles, and sometimes extra large circles.
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No, that's a joke.
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Circles of people who do necromancy and things like that, talking to the dead and talking to spirits and whatnot.
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And they have something called automatic writing, and it's supposed to be communication from the other side.
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And I think, honestly, that's how some people think the Bible was written.
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That the Bible was written as if Paul was like a first century fax machine.
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He just sat down, and God, you know, he just started circling the hand, and somebody put a piece of paper down, and that's how we got Romans.
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No.
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And that's not how we define the inspiration of Scripture as the divine element is a superintending over the human element that is playing a part.
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Now, inspiration clarified.
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Number four in your notes, Roman numeral four.
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This is two things we need to understand.
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What is inspired, the writer or the writings? According to the Scripture, according to the Bible, while both are used in the process of bringing the word to paper, it is the finished product that is called inspired.
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I have people say this all the time.
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Well, Paul was inspired to write Romans.
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That's actually miscommunicating what we believe.
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Paul was used by God to write Romans.
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Romans is what was inspired by God, not Paul.
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Paul wasn't God-breathed.
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Romans was God-breathed.
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He was under the superintending of the Spirit.
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I would say that word.
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He was being carried along by the Spirit, as it says in 1 Peter.
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Is it 1 or 2 Peter? 1 Peter, yeah.
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So we have the passage that talks about being carried along by the Spirit.
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So, yes, but it's the writing itself that was inspired, and so that leads to the second.
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What is inspired? This one's more important from an apologetic standpoint.
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What is inspired, the autographs or the copies? Now, what is an autograph? We often think of an autograph as, hey, we give a famous person a piece of paper, and they sign their name, and that's an autograph.
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In this sense, the autograph is defining the original copy.
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And I want to break some news to you in case you don't know.
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There does not exist anywhere in the world of which we are aware any of the original copies of any of the books of the Bible.
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They just don't exist.
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The earliest copies, however, that we do have, and the earliest fragments of copies, and we're going to see some pictures of these in the weeks to come, go within a, certainly within a century, some possibly dating within 50 years, and they've even recently found paper, parchment, papyri manuscripts that possibly date into the first century of the Gospel of Mark.
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They were found in a mask.
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Yes, it was a mask that had, paper had been used to create like a papier-mâché-type mask.
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It was some kind of an adornment that was used, and they started peeling the paper back off of it, and come to find out some of the paper that was on it was a copy of the Scriptures that could possibly date to within the first century, and this would be the oldest living manuscript of the Gospel of Mark because that's what they've determined already that it is.
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The history of the New Testament is powerful.
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When you start studying and how we've discovered these manuscripts and things, it's just amazing.
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But we don't have the originals.
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That's important.
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Now, when we talk about textual criticism, we'll talk about why that's okay, and I don't want to get into that tonight because I could shoot off on a right turn and we'd never get done, and I know eventually you want to go home.
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But it is key to understand when we're talking about inspiration, we are talking about the original manuscripts.
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We are not talking about the copies.
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The copies are always subject to being corrected, and here's why.
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There's 5,700-plus handwritten Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, and that's just Greek.
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There's also Syriac and Latin and other languages that have all been handwritten and copied, some over 1,000 years old, and no two agree 100%.
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That's where textual criticism comes involved because there are places where it says Christ Jesus and not Jesus Christ.
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There are some where entire lines are missing because of something called homeotelioton.
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That means that the end of the line had the same word as the next line, and so you know how your eye, when you're copying something, will see the end and jump to the end.
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There's whole lines missing because somebody made a mistake, and then that guy copied that guy's manuscript, and that line's missing.
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So there's a whole family now of lines where there's a line missing in the text.
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That's hugely important to know.
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It's hugely important to understand why that's not a bad thing because, let me tell you something, when your kids go to college and those professors who don't believe the Word of God, they're going to be the first ones to tell them this shouldn't be where they hear these things.
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They should hear these things in the church.
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They should know these things, and they should understand these things, and you've heard me talk about them before, but textual criticism's huge.
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So we talk about the inspiration.
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It is first and foremost focused on the original documents, and what we have to do, our goal in textual criticism is trying to make sure that what we are reading is true to the original, and I believe we do.
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I believe that you can read the ESV.
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I believe that you can read the King James.
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I believe you can read the NIV.
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Well, maybe not the NIV.
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I'm just kidding.
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The NIV, I always tease, is the nearly-inspired version.
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No, the NIV is a thought-for-thought.
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I'm kidding, Jack.
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I tease Jack.
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The NIV is a thought-for-thought translation, not a word-for-word translation, and that's where the difference lies, and I'm going to talk about that when we get to translation and how that happens, how translation happens.
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But the key to it is you can trust what you're reading is accurate.
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Yes, sir? Jesus was okay with the Bible.
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Absolutely, wasn't he? And you know, the apostles were okay with the translation because much of what the apostles used was from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
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We can prove that they were quoting from the Septuagint, not from the Hebrew Scriptures at certain points, simply by the language that they used.
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So, yeah, not only was Jesus happy with a copy of Isaiah, but they were happy with a translation of the Old Testament, which they would have called the Scriptures.
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So, yes, what you have is what God intended for you to have.
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Don't let the things we're learning knock you off of your pedestal of faith, but help it re-bolster your faith.
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You don't want to have a faith based in ignorance.
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You want to know the truth.
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The truth shall set you free.
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All right, number five, the results of inspiration.
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I'm going to go through these relatively quickly simply because of time.
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The results of inspiration are an inerrant Bible.
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If God is the author of Scripture, if it came from him, then we know it is without error because he himself is without error.
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If God be true, then the Bible also be true.
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And again, when we talk about error, and I encourage you, how many of you have read our Statement of Faith? I was going to say, well, Jack, you helped write it.
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Honestly, if you go to our Statement of Faith for our church, it says we believe in the inspiration of Scripture, that we believe it's God-breathed, it comes from God, and that it is without error in the original manuscripts.
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We make that plain so that people understand because people ask, well, what does that mean? Well, we do have questions about certain passages.
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We do have questions about certain things that textual criticism we have to deal with.
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And boy, I'm going to get on the wrong subject.
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I have to be careful.
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But I believe the Bible is inerrant, and I believe it came to us inerrant, and I believe God has preserved it.
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It doesn't mean that there aren't some places where we have to ask the question of, is this part of the original? That's the question.
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I mean, honestly, just very quickly.
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Turn to 1 John.
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We'll do it because we're going to do it.
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I can't help it.
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No, now I won't be able to find it.
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Okay, go to 1 John 5.
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Look at verse 7.
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In the ESV it says, For there are three that bear, or rather, there are three that testify.
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And then it goes to verse 8, which says the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree.
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Now, that's in the ESV.
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Jack, does the NIV say the same? Yes.
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Now, at the bottom of the page, is there a note? Yes.
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What does the note say? Thank you.
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Okay, thank you.
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We're on 7? 7.
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Three.
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As the Old Testament law requires two or three witnesses.
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Okay, but it doesn't address the textual variant.
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Okay, it's just talking about the two or three.
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Okay.
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The reason why I bring this up, I know your name.
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Mr.
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Hemingway.
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Don, I know your name.
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Just read it for me.
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For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.
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And there are three that bear witness in the earth, are in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one.
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Okay, so you read verse 8 too, right? Thank you.
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Did you notice that the ESV was a lot shorter? Did you notice that the King James makes reference to the Trinity and the ESV doesn't? That there's an entire line that the ESV doesn't contain? Now, that would make some people really upset.
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In fact, there are certain people who won't use anything but a King James, and that's one of their reasons why.
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They'll say the ESV has taken things out.
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Or the NIV has taken things out.
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Boy, I don't have time for this, but I'm going to mention it anyway.
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What we're dealing with here is a text of only a few words that is not found in any of the ancient handwritten manuscripts of 1 John.
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That entire line is not found in any of them.
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It is found in the Latin, and it is found in other translations, but it's not found in any of the Greek manuscripts until the 16th century.
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The earliest Greek manuscript that has 1 John 5-7 as written is after the 16th century.
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So, what are we to do with that? We have to address it, and scholars already have.
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Scholars have already said this is a place where a note liably was added into the text.
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It was then translated and became part of the textual tradition, which would later become part of what we now call the Bible.
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But because of the massive and copious amounts of copies that we have, we can now trace this back to a source.
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And we can see where things like this happen, and where these deviations happen.
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That's what textual criticism does.
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Man, again, I didn't want to make this a subject tonight, but it's so important, because somebody will come and say, well, right there, that's why I won't use anything but a King James, or they'll say, right there, that's why I won't trust the Bible.
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You know the Bible is the most open book in the world, because we actually have notes at the bottom of the page that tell us these things.
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You won't find a Quran that tells you, hey, there's some parts of this that we got questions about.
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That's not up for debate.
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There are no open conversations about textual criticism in Islam.
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We have it.
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We do it.
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We allow for it.
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Because we're more concerned with the truth than how it affects our feelings.
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We're more concerned with what is true than how it makes us feel.
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So people ask me, do you believe 1 John 5-7, as written in the King James, should be in the Bible? No, I don't.
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That's why I don't use a King James.
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It's not the only reason, but it's one of the reasons.
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But if you happen to believe that it is, I think that is a secondary issue, and I don't think it's anything that should divide fellowship.
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If somebody did believe it's part of the text, and they do believe that history is on their side, I have a good friend.
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He believes the history of this text, based on other, not based on the Greek, based on other translations from the ancient manuscripts and things, he argues that it is.
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Okay, we can disagree and both be brothers in Christ.
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But, because it's not a primary issue, it's a secondary issue.
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Because we both believe in the inspiration of Scripture.
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We both believe God has preserved His Word.
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We just have a difference of opinion as to this particular text and its preservation.
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All right, wow.
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I'm going to finish, but I'm going to finish quick.
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We have an inerrant Bible.
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We have a verbal revelation.
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What is a verbal revelation? That means that the words themselves are inspired, not just the concepts.
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There are some people who believe that only the ideas of the Bible are inspired, not the words.
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And that's why conversations like I just had, showing those two, it wouldn't matter because it's just concepts.
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It's not the verbal inspiration itself.
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It's not the words themselves that matter.
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Part C is similar to that.
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The Bible is inspired in all of its parts.
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We believe that the Bible is completely inspired, not only partially inspired.
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Some people believe that part of the Bible is inspired and part of it isn't.
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And they blame this on Paul.
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Because there is a place in Corinthians, which I'll be teaching on in a few months, where Paul says, I am saying this, not the Lord.
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Remember that in 1 Corinthians? He says specifically, he's talking about the subject, I believe, of marriage and divorce.
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And he says, I am saying this, not the Lord.
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And some people say, ooh, right there's a proof.
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Paul is interjecting his own opinion here.
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But when you read it in its context, that's not what he's saying.
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What he's saying is that Jesus didn't address this issue.
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When he's talking about the Lord, he's talking about the actual Jesus who was here with us and we heard him speak.
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And he didn't address this issue.
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And so now I am under the inspiration of the Spirit.
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Because he says in that same text, I believe I also have the Spirit.
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And I'm saying to you, this is true.
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You understand? He's not discounting his own authority there.
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He's saying, this is something Jesus didn't teach, but I'm now teaching.
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And it still is coming from the same source, the Holy Spirit of God.
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Okay, unbreakable word.
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The Bible is unbreakable.
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Scripture cannot be broken.
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That's John 10.35, if you want to make a note there.
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Scripture cannot be broken.
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And somebody said, well, you're just talking about textual criticism.
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Are you talking out of both sides of your mouth? No, because I'm still talking about the original manuscripts, which I believe are absolutely infallible.
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And our goal is to try to determine what they said.
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Finally, an authoritative standard.
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Jesus and the apostles used the Scripture as the final authority in all matters, and so should we.
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When there is a question in this church, when there is a question of what we ought to do, and if that question is answered in the Scripture, we don't have a choice.
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If we are to do what we say we are, and that is to be a biblically functioning church.
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Because I know sometimes, there have been times in the past where issues have come up, and the question is, well, what should we do? And it's like, well, stop.
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Does the Bible give the answer? Well, yeah, the Bible says we ought to do this.
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Then there's no other answer.
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I don't know, I don't like that.
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Jimmy Crack Corn.
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I don't care.
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Because it's what it says, and we're going to do what it says.
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It has to be.
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And I know that's hard, and I know the favorite line of so many people is, well, I know it's wrong, but we're going to do this anyway.
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No.
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We have an authoritative standard.
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We have something to stand on.
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We have the Word of God upon which to stand when it comes to issues that we have to face.
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We face it standing on the rock of God's Word.
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Finally, false views of inspiration.
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I'll give you these relatively quickly here as we close.
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Natural inspiration.
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This is the view that holds that there is no supernatural element in the writing of Scripture, that the writers of the Bible were just men of unusual religious insight.
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That's what some people believe.
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Spiritual illumination.
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The illumination view suggests that some Christians may have spiritual insight that, although similar to other Christians, is greater in degree.
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And in this view, any devout Christian illuminated by the Holy Spirit can be the author of inspired Scripture.
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And adherence to this view suggests that it is not the writings that are inspired, but it is the people who are inspired.
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And it's a spiritual illumination that allows someone to write Scripture.
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Third, partial or dynamic inspiration.
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That's people who believe that only parts of the Bible are inspired, not the whole.
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This often comes up in the narratives.
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They'll say, well, yeah, I believe God inspired Moses to write the Ten Commandments, but I don't know about all that.
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It's all those stories of the desert, everything that happened.
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There's just a lot of stories.
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That's Hebrew mythology.
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There couldn't have been that many people.
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603,550 men? That puts it well over 2 million people if you count the old men, the children, and the women.
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That's too many people to have lived in Egypt and not left some kind of trail for themselves in the desert of Kadesh Barnea.
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Yeah, you've heard this before.
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This is the argument that the Bible has inspired parts, but doesn't have an inspired whole.
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Yes, sir? The way they used to put it is they would say the Bible could tell.
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That's right.
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That's a sneaky thing.
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Because when somebody says the Bible contains truth, they'll say it contains truth.
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That means it also contains error.
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The Bible is truth.
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The Bible is the Word of God, not contains the Word of God.
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It is the Word of God, and that's the difference.
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Hey, hey, hey.
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I know it's after 630, but we're not done.
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I promise we're almost done.
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Conceptual inspiration.
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This view holds the concepts and ideas.
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This is very similar to what we talked about under the other ones, is that the concepts are inspired, not the whole truth.
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Letter E is the one I talked about earlier, divine dictation.
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This is people who believe in sort of a celestial fax machine.
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And finally, neo-orthodox opinion, that the Bible in its written form is not the revealed Word of God.
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However, it becomes the Word of God when it becomes that to someone.
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The reason why it's called neo-orthodox, not because it's connected to the Orthodox Church in any way, is this is the new popular view.
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People say, well, the Word of God becomes real to you when you believe it.
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And it becomes subjective.
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And the Word of God then is very much a subjective thing.
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And it becomes true when it's true to you.
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Now, it's true whether you believe it or not.
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But that's the neo-orthodox opinion.
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It becomes the Word of God.
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I'll end with a quote from Paul Innes, and then I'll pray.
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It says, Inspiration is necessary to preserve the revelation of God.
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If God has revealed Himself, but the record of that revelation is not accurately recorded, then the revelation of God is subject to question.
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Hence, inspiration guarantees the accuracy of that revelation.
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So, this is the second step.
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God revealed Himself, and that's what we talked about last week.
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God has given His revelation in written form, so that now we may possess it.
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That's inspiration, or the giving of the Scriptures.
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Next week, next time, we're going to talk about canonization.
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Why is it that we believe Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote a gospel, and Judas didn't? Or Thomas didn't? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for its truth.
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I thank You for all that we've learned tonight.
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I pray, Lord, that what I've said has not been confusing.
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Because this subject is so vast and so wide and so deep that it could easily cause someone to drown in it.
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And I don't want that to happen, Lord.
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I don't want to be confusing.
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I pray that it's been helpful.
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And I pray that we would, in the weeks to come, have a desire, Lord, to just grow deeper and stronger in this.
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And as we look at manuscripts, and we look at pictures, and we look at history and outlines, Lord, help it to evermore grow, our faith in the Word of God.
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And we pray all this in Jesus' name.
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Amen.