Lesson 2: Inspiration - Verbal and Plenary, Part 1

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Lesson 2: Inspiration - Verbal and Plenary, Part 2

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All right, let's begin I'm gonna begin by reading 2nd Timothy chapter 3 and then a passage from 2nd

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Peter 2nd Timothy chapter 3 beginning of verse 14 you however continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of knowing from whom you

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Have learned them and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation

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Through faith, which is in Christ Jesus All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction for training and righteousness

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So that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work and then from 2nd

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Peter chapter 1 For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty For when he received honor and glory from God the

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Father such an utterance as this was made to him by the majestic glory This is my beloved son with whom

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I am well Pleased and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain

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So we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star

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Rises in your hearts But know this first of all that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own

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Interpretation for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will but men moved by the

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Holy Spirit spoke from God Let's pray together before we begin Father we want to give our time and our attention and the focus of our hearts here to you this morning knowing that you are able to use this teaching and our time spent meditating upon the inspiration of scripture to Equip us to give a defense to everyone who asked us a reason for the hope that is in us

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You would give us the ability to articulate clearly or the why we it is that we have confidence in your word

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Why we can trust it how we know that it is true And you have provided all these things for us so that we may be

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Thoroughly equipped and fully equipped and in every way to to acts of service and worship and fellowship and Ultimately to be carried through to eternal glory and we thank you that you do all of these things through your word it is majestic and glorious and and we can have a

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Complete confidence in it in your writing of it and in your preserving it for us And we pray that you would help us to think clearly about these things so that We would be equipped in this end to this end.

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We ask in Jesus name. Amen we're talking today about the inspiration of scriptures and This is where we must begin as we're in the series called

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God wrote a book Looking at how God has written and preserved his word for us and this is where we must begin by talking about the doctrine of inspiration because We have to ask first of all, what kind of book is the

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Bible? What kind of book is it because if it is not God's Word then it really doesn't matter if it's been preserved accurately for us at all does it

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Ultimately the only thing that should concern us and hasn't been preserved as if it's God's Word if it's God's Word Then we ought to be concerned to find out how and if scripture has been preserved accurately for us

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But if it's just another collection of human writings and human musings by gifted sages and pious religious spiritually minded individuals throughout human history if that's all it is just a collection of maxims and proverbs and random statements and observations about life by People who are average and it turns out to be no more inspired than anything

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I've ever written or you've ever written Then it really doesn't matter if it's been preserved accurately for us that really shouldn't concern us at all then then we could just look at it like a

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Chicken soup for the Christian soul and take from it what we can and really discard the rest of it

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Have chicken and throw out all the bones but if it is God's Word then it then that is what determines whether or not we should be concerned or Care whether or not it's been accurately preserved for us.

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So we're going to examine three concepts here in the coming weeks Probably taking us into early

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March to do this we're going to examine inspiration and then the doctrine of inerrancy and with that the doctrine of infallibility because those two though they are this close to Though they are connected.

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They are not the same and then we're going to talk about the doctrine of preservation So today we're talking about the doctrine of inspiration proper.

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So in your notebook there under the doctrine of inspiration proper I have two definitions. I'm going to read them both to you

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One is from from God to us by Norman Geisler and the second from a book Theology text lectures and systematic theology by Henry Clarence Teason So the first definition spirit moved men wrote

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God breathed words Which are divinely authoritative for Christian faith and practice that is the doctrine of inspiration just succinctly stated spirit moved men wrote

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God breathed words which are divinely authoritative for Christian faith and practice and Then look at the second definition the

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Holy Spirit so guided and superintended the writers of the sacred text Making use of their own unique personalities that they wrote all that he wanted them to write without excess or error

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Now today, we're just looking at the doctrine of inspiration and what it means next week Well the next lesson it might not be next week

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But the next lesson that we're going to be looking at is the doctrine of inspiration as Scripture teaches it What does the Bible say about itself?

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Do we have reason to believe that Scripture is inspired because Scripture makes that claim for itself? That's our that's the subject next week today.

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We're just looking at the doctrine sort of in a general way What does what when we talk about a divine inspiration or the inspiration of Scripture?

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What do we mean by that? each of those two definitions has three essential elements three essential elements to them and Each of these definitions contains these three essential elements because without these three elements you have no doctrine of inspiration there are three things that are necessary to have a divinely inspired book and Any understanding of the doctrine of divine inspiration has to contain all three of these elements

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So the question then for us is the book that we hold in our hands, which we call the Bible Is it

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God's Word or is it men's words? God's words we have somebody says

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God's Word. Oh Somebody says both Right. So it is

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God's Word and it is men's words And so this is where there are three elements come into play

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So the first element is divine causality divine causality C -a -u -s -a -l -i -t -y if you're taking notes divine causality and by that we mean that God is the prime mover

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It is God who is the one who has moved to reveal himself in the pages of Scripture. That's what we mean by divine causality men do not seek after God the original intended super overarching author of Scripture is not

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Individual men the doctrine of inspiration has the element of divine causality God is the prime mover

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He is the one who initiated a revelation of himself to men He is the one who desired to reveal himself to men if there is a

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God and we believe that there is if there is a God then he is a Communicating God because we are created in his image and we are communicating beings or communicative beings and so if there's a

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God who exists and he is a Communicating God then he would have taken the initiative to be the prime mover to make sure that he has

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Revealed himself to mankind or to those whom he has created So it's not humans writing

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Scripture that Into which God breathes his word We're gonna look at this one to talk about different views of inspiration later on But we talk about divine causality.

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What we mean is that God himself is the one who initiates this process He is the one who desired to reveal himself and he worked in such a way so as to reveal exactly what it is and To write down through human authors exactly what it is that he wanted to write down.

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So we talk about inspiration We're not talking about a collection of human writings into which God says, okay, I'm gonna breathe power into these

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As if he's stumbled upon Romans one time after Paul had written and thought, you know Romans, that's a really good book

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I mean we could make that scripture. I'll just I'll just decide to use Romans in a real powerful way throughout human history I might even use that to spark a

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Reformation sometime in the 1500s or something like that That's not what we mean by divine inspiration that God looked through human history and found some writings that men had written and decided that those

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Would be good documents to call his word No God knew that he wanted Romans written and he worked and moved in such a way that Romans would be written and Romans would be exactly what

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Paul wanted or exactly what God wanted when Paul got done writing it So God is the ultimate source behind this giving of Revelation.

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The second element of the three is prophetic agency So divine causality meaning God is the prime mover prophetic agency

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This refers to the men who were moved by God to write scripture So this is what Peter's talking about in 2nd

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Peter chapter 1 when he says men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God So these are the these are the prophetic agents or the human agents prophetic agency refers to the human men who were used to write

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Down scripture. So God did not use angels to record scripture God used human authors and human instruments and very flawed ones too, by the way

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Can you think of some really flawed men who were the agents of God's divine revelation? Paul Of all the flawed men you pick

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Paul I mean I can think of I can think of some other more flawed men than Paul But we'll go with Paul as a to start off with but let's go to further down towards the bottom of the barrel

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Can you give me some more examples of flawed men whom God used to write scripture? Jonah was a flawed man, right

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Peter King David, how about Solomon? Man Solomon of all the instruments to use for divine purposes in writing scripture

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Solomon He gave us the Song of Solomon beautiful picture of marital love and intimacy He gave us with Proverbs the wisdom literature that's just filled with wisdom for life, right?

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Amazing you can read a proverb anything that is just a perfect description of life and then there's what oh, yeah

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How can you get away from Ecclesiastes right? There's Ecclesiastes and interestingly God used Solomon's Hardness of heart and the lowest of point of his life in order to give us

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Ecclesiastes So flawed men so these are not necessarily the most righteous and the most pious men that God could have chosen or the most flawless men if they're

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By human human standards of flawlessness, but these were some in some cases some of the most

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Marred vessels that God used as the instruments of his divine revelation So he used men so that when we read

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Romans were reading Paul and when we read Genesis were reading Moses And these are the individual men whom

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God used and not only that but he used their situations their vocabularies Their their literary styles their emotions their environments their personalities even the individual

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Circumstances and their own minds and their own backgrounds and the circumstances of their day in order to craft those divine writings

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I mean think of what went into the variety that we have in Scripture when we talk about the

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Word of God in Scripture Think of what went into that So when we read when we read Paul in Galatians, for instance

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Paul in Galatians doesn't sound anything like Paul in first Thessalonians Paul in Galatians is you foolish

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Galatians who has bewitched you to switch Gospels so quickly in midstream Did did

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I come to you in the power of the flesh or in the power of the Spirit and if I came in the power Why are you now wanting to be perfected in the flesh?

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I didn't you understand it. How can you be so foolish? How can you be so naive? it's just it's a When Paul sat down to write the book of Galatians you get the impression that he's not concerned about the relationships that he has within The church he has one thing in mind and one thing only and that's a defense of the truth

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So he sits down to write Galatians and he is Coming after the Judaizers and coming after these foolish Galatians who had been so quickly steered away into a different gospel

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But then you read first Thessalonians My brethren my crown of rejoicing When you get to heaven that you are gonna be the ones that we boast in you are a boasting and our joy

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We couldn't be prouder of you You have no need for me to write to you anything concerning your love for one another because you've demonstrated your love for me

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And you've demonstrated your one love for one another But I would just encourage you still more and more to continue to be the the perfect and ideal church that you are

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That's Paul in first Thessalonians You know what is necessary to get the Galatian Paul and the first Thessalonians Paul, and by the way, it's not split personalities

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It is it is God supernaturally using all of the all of the various elements in the

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Thessalonian life and the Thessalonian situation and those people in order to Craft a circumstance so that when

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Paul is taken away from them or being with them for only three weeks He writes to them a letter that bears his heart and his love for them

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And then there was a whole nother situation going on in Galatia And these are not written these are not like Paul in his early life in Galatia and then

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Paul the old man These Galatians I chose those two for this reason Paul and Galatians are not written very far apart

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They're only a couple of years apart but when Paul writes Galatians He has a situation going on there that threatened the gospel and a bunch of a bunch of young believers who were quickly abandoning that And false teachers had come in so that God gives us

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Galatians and God gives us first Thessalonians and they are radically different Totally different backgrounds still

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Paul still his language still his passion, but totally different epistles Galatians and first Thessalonians Matthew and Luke consider the differences between Matthew and Luke do we have four identical

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Gospels? No, we don't have four identical Gospels. That's a very good thing Matthew is a very

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Jewish gospel you read through the gospel of Matthew you get it written by a Jewish man who grew up in Judaism and He is familiar with the

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Old Testament scriptures And he quotes them fluently and he is writing to a Jewish audience everything about Matthew is very Jewish You read the gospel of Luke totally different Luke is a historian

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He is a doctor the attention to detail that Luke gives to describing the illnesses that Jesus healed is way different than any of the other

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Gospels Luke spends more time and attention talking about the people and the diseases and the illnesses and ailments that Jesus healed and the ramifications of that than the other gospel writers do why because Luke is a physician so Luke is a

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Physicians doctor physicians gospel and Luke is a historian So the amount of historical detail and research that Luke did to write his gospel is different than Matthew doesn't mean

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Matthew is inaccurate It just means that Luke gives more attention to some of the finer finer points of details in his collection of this

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Instances from the life of Jesus and written to a Gentile audience So Luke emphasizes in Jesus's interaction with Gentiles.

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That's very significant to Luke Why because Luke is a Gentile? so God took a Gentile man and used him to write a Gentile gospel to a

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Gentile audience a doctor talking about the healings that Jesus did and then God took a Jewish tax collector who had grown up in Judaism and used him to write a very

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Jewish gospel to a Jewish audience Look at that variety, right? And this is this is some of the stuff that we ought to appreciate when we're reading through Scripture and appreciating

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How it is that God has given it to us? Ephesians is very tightly reasoned Romans is very easy to outline relatively speaking

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Have you ever tried to outline first John? You know what outlining first John is like It's first John is the themes of light and life and love and If John would just talk about them in that order or any order would be nice, but John doesn't do that Right John meanders through and I don't use meandering in a bad way as if it's aimless or purposeless

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But John sort of meanders through these different themes of light and life and love and he he ties them all together

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He weaves them all together sometimes going from one to the other in all of these different orders talking about all these various things from all these different perspectives and The book of first John almost defies being outlined in any kind of a logical way

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And if you compare commentaries on first John, you'll find that the outlines vary as much as the personalities of the authors

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Right the commentaries. It's it's very difficult to outline first John John and Paul are totally different with Romans You have an outline almost a lawyer's mind laying out the gospel right guilty as charged the first three chapters

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Justified Romans 4 and 5. What does that justification mean? It means that we're no longer slaves of sin chapter 6

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It means that though we're no longer slaves of sin in chapter 7 We still do the things that we don't want to do but glory be to God chapter 8 that he has delivered us from this body of flesh

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So he gets through laying out all of that It's just a logical Logical progression of of the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of salvation and the gospel all the way through the end of chapter 8

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And then then he raises this question. Well, what about the Jews then right Romans 9 10 and 11? How does that tie in with the sovereignty of God and then you get to chapter 12 and after answering all those questions?

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Okay Here are the practical implications of this gospel message chapter 12 and spiritual gifts and 13 14 15 and then it closes it wraps it

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All up with chapter 16 that is easy to outline That's Paul's logical legal mind a man trained by the greatest legal mind of his day

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Gamaliel Here's a man who models his teacher and he thinks rationally he thinks logically and linearly

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John to all over the place just through life love and light and and what different personality we have in those two scriptures, right?

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All of that is God given It's by the providence of God that we have such variety in Scripture. It's by his design

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Consider the difference between Philippians the pistol of joy and the one we already mentioned that we should not speak

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Ecclesiastes Right the Paul rejoice every more and I gonna say rejoice and then

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Ecclesiastes is vanity vanity all is vanity Those two books are in the same Bible. Those two books are given by the same divine author

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Truly amazing, isn't it? Paul's language is different than Peter and John Sometimes the the writings that we have in Scripture have run on sentences

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Different punctuation than we would have Sometimes Paul begins a thought that it doesn't actually kind of finish Sorry gets sidetracked

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Sometimes like I do and get off on a bit of a tangent and then you try and come back to it You don't quite come back to where you were at and you go on to something else

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That's there's a very human flavor to every writing of Scripture Even like with Ecclesiastes you get

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Solomon's heart the the emotions the vocabulary the style the mind the

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Circumstances the upbringing the ethnicity all of that ties in to all of the variety we have in Scripture And God did all of this without doing violence to the will of the author without interrupting them

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So when we're reading through Scripture, we don't we're not reading through Romans And and if I were studying through Romans and teaching it to you guys

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I wouldn't say can I look at the middle of verse 12? You can see where God interrupted what Paul was trying to say and then

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God started doing his own thing over here So then we have this is the Word of God then Paul gets back in control over here

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We don't have any kind of a multiple personality or split disorder with the Apostle Paul when he's writing

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Scripture It is it is God using the human instruments and what we get in Scripture is our books each individual one with a uniquely human flavor

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So that when you read the writings of Paul even the language that he uses it's radically different than the words that John uses

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It's radically different than the style of the Apostle Peter Hebrews is is different than any other book in the

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New Testament and it perplexes people There are similarities to things that Peter writes. There are similarities to things that John writes

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There are similarities to things that Paul writes in the book of Hebrews We don't know who wrote the book of Hebrews, but it bears the mark of divine inspiration and Hebrews has its own flavor, too

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Right, we haven't even mentioned that Hebrews is Hebrews is unique amongst all the New Testament books So we have divine causality.

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That is the God is the prime mover. The second element is human or prophetic agency We have a prophetic agency

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That is the men who were uniquely moved to write these books and this results in the third thing

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Which has written authority? Written authority that is the product of inspiration.

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It is a divinely authoritative book what we have in Scripture is a written -down

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Authority in writing so that we can say that all disputes must bow the knee before Scripture all

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Discussions and all controversies must ultimately bend to the Word of God all questions Regarding spiritual things or divine truth can only be answered in Scripture and it is the only writing that carries the authority of heaven

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Scripture because of this view of inspiration we believe that God was the divine author

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He wrote through human means he did this without violating their will He did it using their own unique circumstances personalities

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Vocabulary and gifts and what we have then is a book which carries divine authority

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So divine causality prophetic agency and then a written authority. So we would say that divine causality plus Prophetic agency equals a written authority.

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That is the doctrine of inspiration now look back up at those two Those two definitions that I gave you spirit moved men.

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That is what that's prophetic agency Wrote God breathed words. That's divine causality which are divinely authoritative for Christian faith and practice.

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That's written authority Those are the three elements of the doctrine of inspiration the second Definition the

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Holy Spirit so guided and super intended the writers of the sacred text. That is the Holy Spirit is the divine causality

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He super intended the writers of the sacred text That is the human or prophetic agency making use of their own unique Personalities and they wrote all that he wanted them to write without excess or error.

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That's written authority So that what we have is a written authority All right, so that is the definition broadly speaking of the doctrine of inspiration.

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Are there any questions? Before we move on. Yes Yeah, that's a very good observation

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Scripture contains because it was written by human instruments scripture contains all of the emotions and experiences that men can have

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Right the the joys of sexual intimacy in the Song of Solomon The depression and discouragement of the life tried to be lived without this on earth the sovereignty of God in the book of Ecclesiastes you have the joy of Philippians you have the the passion of of Of Galatians you have in 2nd

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Corinthians Paul being abused and Misinterpreted and him coming to the defense of his apostolic ministry all of these various emotions and situations.

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There's something in scripture That touches on all of those there's always something no matter where we're at in life

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We can relate to one of these issues The question is just finding it in there and understanding what it is and how it is that we're to relate to it

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Yeah, good observation. Yeah, Ken. I Think we're the question is how do we get away from the circular logic that the

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Bible is true because the Bible says it's true We're gonna actually deal with that in the next lesson in some detail.

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So let me hold off on that question until the next one That that quote, yeah, the first one is from God to us is

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Norman Geisler Henry Teason From systematic theology

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Henry Teason's systematic theology text was my textbook in first year second year third year Bible College All right, any other questions?

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What do we mean we talk about divine inspiration? I'm gonna I'm gonna give you some false views of inspiration here in a moment that we'll kind of contrast it with So let me give some let's talk about letter

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C related concepts Some related concepts and they don't have these listed here But I'm gonna give you three three things that kind of are all similar and related

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I want to make some distinctions between these three things revelation inspiration and illumination revelation inspiration and illumination

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These three things are all kind of tied together in some ways and oftentimes Christians speak of inspiration as if they're just they're actually describing illumination when they talk about inspiration and sometimes they talk about inspiration as if it's revelation so I want to distinguish between these three so that we're kind of clear in What it is that we're talking about Revelation the word revelation is not the last book in your

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Bible though That's called revelation true, but to by revelation what we're talking about is the content that is revealed Our Bible contains divine revelation.

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Our Bible is divine revelation. I shouldn't say it contains divine revelation Our Bible is divine revelation

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There is content revealed in this content about the nature of God the nature of man the nature of reality the afterlife heaven hell rewards sin judgment to come the nation of Israel the history of humanity creation

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The persons of the Trinity etc. All of that is the content when we talk about revelation We're talking about the doctrine itself or the content that is revealed inside Scripture the word illumination

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We use to sorry inspiration. We use that to refer to the revealing of the truth So revelation is that which is revealed inspiration is the word we use to describe the process by which

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God revealed that again God being the one who reveals it through human agency resulting in a written revelation.

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That's inspiration The content is what we're talking about in God giving revelation So you'll talk about you'll hear people talk about God gave me this revelation or God gave prophetic revelation

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Or we believe that prophetic revelation is for today or God's still giving revelation today They're talking about the content and should be kind of talking about the content that is given and we distinguish that from the process

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Inspiration by which that content comes to us. The third concept is illumination illumination refers to Understanding the truth that is revealed

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Understanding the truth that is revealed So revelation the content

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Inspiration the process of revealing it illumination is what happens when we understand the content that is revealed so Let me distinguish between those three one more way and then

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I'll give you an illustration Revelation is the fact of divine communication Inspiration is the means of divine communication and illumination is the gift of understanding the divine communication

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Illumination is the understanding of divine communication So, let me let me show you why this is important You will hear some people talk about I was reading my

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Bible this morning and I came across this passage and just sort of jumped off the page of me and and I came to understand this passage in an entirely new way.

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God was giving me revelation that a correct statement God is not giving you revelation. What was

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God giving you? illumination provided provided That what was illuminated was in fact the meaning of the text and not something that you invented in your own mind so if you're reading through Scripture and you say

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I'll give you an illustration that I'm using in an upcoming book You're reading through the book of Joshua for instance, and you come across the name

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Benjamin You say well God revealed to me what it was that I was supposed to name our next child Benjamin, but why would you think that well because I was reading through Joshua 18 and I came across the name

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Benjamin and it jumped Off the page God revealed to me something new Now God revealed something in the book of Joshua So he's not revealing to you something new

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Did he give you inspiration in that moment? no inspiration refers to The way in which

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God gave us the book of Joshua and kept it for us God the way in which God gave us the book of Joshua is having the name

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Benjamin jump off the page at me illumination Why not just name him

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Joshua? It's not illumination either right because what jumped off the page at me in that name

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Has nothing to do with the meaning of that passage in its context or the intention of the writer I'll give you an example of a time when

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God allowed me to under Now listen the process of illumination hopefully happens when everybody studies scripture it happens as you're reading through and you're understanding what it is that you're reading and the the amount that you grow and your

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Understanding and of illumination scripture your understanding of scripture is growing in illumination. Hopefully that happens for every

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Christian Sometimes it happens in big leaps or big bounds. I'll give you an example of one time when it happened to me.

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I was reading through John John chapter 12 where Jesus quotes or John quotes a passage from Isaiah When Isaiah saw

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God high and lifted up in the glory of his train filled the temple in Isaiah chapter 6 And Isaiah saw that and John quotes that passage and says this

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Isaiah said when he saw him For years, I read that and thought yeah this Isaiah said when he saw

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Yahweh God Okay, got it read through John one day I was reading through John 12 and it dawned on me all of a sudden that the hymn was not a reference to the

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Father Or the God whom Isaiah saw in Isaiah chapter 6 John was saying this

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Isaiah wrote when he Isaiah saw Jesus Jesus is the hymn So what what dawned on me in that moment?

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Yahweh Jesus is yet the Yahweh that Isaiah saw whose glory filled the temple in Isaiah chapter 6

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That connection with the deity of Christ. I believed in the deity of Christ, but that connection in that passage I'd never seen that before that is the meaning of John chapter 12

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By the way, that is what he's saying now in that moment I had understanding or illumination and insight into a passage of Scripture into the real meaning of that passage of Scripture That's what we mean by illumination

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It's not when something jumps off the page and I invent some meaning that is never there for the original audience It's me understanding the passage in its context understanding what the author intended and having some sort of insight into that.

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That's Illumination, that's the work of the Holy Spirit So when that happens, we don't say God gave us new revelation Nor do we say

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God gave us inspiration because those are not accurate words to use to describe that we would say God gave me Illumination in the text in studying it.

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I did the hard work and the meaning came out of that I saw the meaning of it. I understood the meaning of that the Spirit of God shines the light on that That is a that is a privilege that is only reserved for believers because the natural man does not understand the things of the

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Spirit of God 1st Corinthians chapter 2 a natural man an unbelieving person who has not repented of their sins the trust of Christ for salvation who does not have a renewed heart and A renewed mind and the

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Holy Spirit inside him He cannot he can understand certain things about Scripture But he cannot have the illuminating work of the

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Holy Spirit Not until his heart has been changed and his mind has been changed and his nature has been changed. Can he honestly have illumination?

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That makes sense so those three distinct concepts we have to keep them differently and make a different make sure that we understand we're talking about when we

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Talk about those three things revelation is the content what is given the information? Inspiration is the process by which

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God revealed that and illumination is our subjective It is subjective because it is us as the subject coming to an understanding of that Which has been revealed by the by inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit Any questions on those three? Yes Peter How do we know that our subjective understanding of the text is accurate and it's what we should be knowing

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That is the result of the spirit of the work of the Spirit of God and the hard work of doing the doing duty in The text doing a duty in the text in reading and understanding it

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Our illumination the illumination that we receive from the Holy Spirit as he draws us near to himself and reveals to us deeper more profound

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Insights into Scripture that will grow over time as we grow closer to the Lord and we read Scripture That's why

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I'm that's why I passionately Try and persuade people every year if you're not in the habit of reading through the

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Bible once a year you should do it You're not gonna. Are you gonna understand everything you read in there? No And don't think that I understand

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I read through Scripture with the same detail and attention to detail Of the whole Bible every year that I give to Hebrews.

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I can't do that I spent 40 hours a week working on what I'm gonna present to you in one verse I can't do that for every verse in Scripture, but I do read through the entire

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Bible once every year Why do I do that so that my understanding will grow and my ability to see the context will grow and and Understanding Scripture and how it was given and what's in there?

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All of that is a necessary element of rightly understanding the word of truth Paul says to Timothy you need to be a be diligent to present yourself approved a workman that does not need to be ashamed

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Rightly handling the word of truth. That is something that requires diligence and work And it does require effort

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Yeah Yeah, how do you answer the question watch your interpretation because in illumination does come down to a certain understanding or interpretation of the text

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That's a more complex question to answer simply because If you have an interpretation of Scripture you have to be able to defend that from the text

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And so that's where you have to get into a discussion where somebody say well, that's just your interpretation and my response that well

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Then what is your interpretation? How do you interpret it? Let's let's go to the text Let's open it up and take a look at it And let's walk through it from top to bottom and see and you justify your interpretation of the text

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I'll try and justify my interpretation of the text and let's see how let's see whose interpretation wins out at the end

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Yes, yeah does the practical application of a text fit under illumination

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I think that would the answer that would be yes You Application is application is personal application is something that is very individual to the person when we're reading

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Scripture We always want to make sure that our application comes back to a right understanding of the text Otherwise, we're naming our kids

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Benjamin because we ran across it in Joshua chapter 18 So we always need to make sure that our understanding of the passage determines our application of the passage and so that's why interpretation and understanding the text is essential and Our application of it will be very individual

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I can preach One passage of Scripture and I've had this happen where I've got done with a sermon somebody's come up and said, you know

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The way the Lord used this in my life as he showed me that He convicted me the X Y & Z Man, I wasn't even going for that.

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Like I was it wasn't even on my radar that that would be an application of the text Yes That's the sanctifying work of the

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Spirit of God. It's but what when I when I come up with an application for the text I can't say the Lord revealed this to me because see then

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I'm using the term revelation new content. So I have to be careful and You know me enough to know that I try to be very precise with my language so as not to create confusion amongst people

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I cannot say I came across this passage and I was convicted that I needed to Do X Y &

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Z in my application of this passage. This is what the Lord wants me to do to pursue holiness That might be an application that is obvious and I feel inclined to that I should pursue that application

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But I can't say I was reading through Scripture and the Lord revealed to me or the Lord spoke to me and said that I am

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To do X Y & Z because now we're talking about revelation. I'm not talking about illumination I can be I can be mistaken in my understanding of revelation

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But God cannot be mistaken in what he says about revelation So I have to be careful that I'm not claiming

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Revelation for something that's really application or just an understanding of the text Because God is not necessarily tell

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I can't know that God is telling me that that's what the text means Because my friend who believed that God told him to name his son

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Benjamin from Joshua chapter 18 He believed that that's what God was telling him. Well, that's new revelation I don't I didn't think it was inspiration or illumination nor did they think it was proper application

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I didn't think I didn't think it hit the mark in any of that but He claimed it as divine revelation a way that God revealed something to him

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That makes sense. So in my application had to be careful that I'm not saying God told me or God revealed to me

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I can say that the Spirit of God convicted me. That's biblical language the Spirit of God revealed

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That's not biblical language because now we're talking about different content rather than just the application. There can be only one meaning of a passage

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But that one meaning of the passage might manifest itself in a hundred different applications, which is why I talk about You'll notice that I'm and sometimes

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I'm criticized for this and I will take this criticism You will notice that I'm very slow to list all of the ways that you can apply scripture to your life from the pulpit

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So I'm teaching through a passage. I don't get to the end and say okay now here's what you need to do this week Alright, so mark

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Here's what you need to do and you with your wife and your family this week to apply this passage scripture and Pat Here's what you need to do in your work and in your shop to apply this passage scripture and Josh Here's what you need to do this week.

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I don't do that I don't I don't get specific like that Why because I believe that if God's people understand the clear meaning of the passage the application of that passage will be clear to each individual person and One person over here might read that passage and hear what

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I'm saying I understand that and they know what that means for them They don't need me to tell them that somebody on the other side is gonna have a totally different application of that passage

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Because that's the work of the Spirit of God to apply that and once I start saying here's how you need to apply this in Your marriage and your business in your life tomorrow morning, etc.

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What I've just laid upon you is law I've just laid upon you a burden and I said here's what it looks like for you

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Well, that might not be what it looks like for you That might be what I think it looks like because I'm looking at you and thinking this is what you need to do

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But that might not be what it looks like for you. And so I'm mostly thinking about Josh.

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Yes So I'm very slow to do that from the pulpit because I think that when you when you lay out that the

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Meaning of the passage and it is so clear to people they see it in the text. They see it as God's authority

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This is what God has said Then there's going to be 200 applications here on a Sunday morning.

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It's gonna look different for everybody Not without the working of the illumination, right and so my prayer in teaching through scripture is that each person here will begin to see

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God for what he is and see Christ for who he is and see the truth of Scripture is and that in doing that there are going to be people who are convicted to do different things as a result of that But that's part of the illumination process and applications not revelation, right?

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Any other questions? All right, let's move on to this is gonna work out perfect because I'm gonna get

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Duke D clarifications on inspiration and then next week we'll do three views of inspiration because I had a whole bunch of bonus material

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I'm just gonna work into the second half of this and and this will be this will work out good. So clarification on inspiration

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One thing that we need to remember it is let's make sure that yes, it is the Bible that is inspired and not the writings

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The one time that scripture speaks of fail new sauce the Greek word for inspiration to a new sauce

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It is describing the graph a the writings and not the writers and this is a careful distinction

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We believe that scripture is inspired not the writers now I understand that when we sometimes we are really loose in our conversation.

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I've done it as well I said talk about the inspired writers And we mean John was inspired Paul was right when he was writing this but it's not the writers

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Technically speaking that are inspired Because what is our Doctrine of Inspiration say God used divine instruments or God used human instruments as the divine cause to produce written

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Revelation it is the revelation that is breathed out. It is the graph a that is theo new sauce that's given by inspiration

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It's not the writers who were inspired Does that make sense? sometimes we can use the term inspiration to refer to the whole process of God using human authors to write written authority and that's appropriate and that's fine

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But we need to be careful that we don't think of that Which is inspired as the writers themselves because if we're thinking that that which is inspired is the writers themselves

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And what would that mean? What would the implication of that be? They wrote it right or It would mean that everything that author wrote was inspired

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Was everything that Paul wrote inspired? wasn't No, how do

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I know that? Everything he wrote isn't in Scripture That Paul was a tent maker.

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Do you think you ever wrote out a receipt for a tent that he purchased? Or John sold us a quick grocery list to Timothy before heading down to the marketplace.

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You think you ever did that? Not everything Paul wrote is in Scripture Not everything that Paul wrote is inspired none of those authors

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But when Paul sat down to write Romans God's intention was to use Paul as the instrument to write that written authority

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And so what we have in Romans is God breathed God breathed it out through Paul Same thing with Ecclesiastes same thing with first Peter things the same thing with the

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Gospel of John, etc God spoke so that the writings themselves the product is what is inspired not the writers themselves

40:25

So properly speaking inspiration describes the product which is the Bible Number two the doctrine of inspiration and the consequent authority does not automatically extend to every copy of the

40:38

Bible But only to the original manuscripts So inspiration only extends to the original manuscripts.

40:45

Yeah Garrett The original autographs. Yes What did I say?

40:50

Yeah autographs. I'm using and that's and right now I'm using autographs and manuscripts synonymously

40:55

But I understand because manuscripts can refer to copies of the autographs. Yes, Jason. I Was hoping nobody would ask that question

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Is it Yes Yes, so this is a good question, is it possible that Paul wrote something that was inspired but has not been preserved

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We have to this is a good question because we have to distinguish between God's intent in speaking inspired and authoritative words and text and God's intent in preserving for his church over the course of time a

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Corpus of writings that may include everything that is inspired, but it may not include everything that is inspired

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So for instance the Apostle Paul has two letters to the Corinthians We talked about this last week, which were written They've not been preserved for us the first letter to the

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Corinthians Which is before our first Corinthians and a letter between what we regard as first and second Corinthians There was a letter in there the

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Paul refers to as the severe letter those letters have not been preserved for us now Were they inspired? It I don't we don't know that I don't know that Was did

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God intend to preserve that for us? That I know for sure the answer that is no he did not intend to preserve that for us

42:25

Yeah, it does come into how they canonized what they did I don't know that the early church ever wrestled over those lost letters of Paul to decide whether or not they were inspired

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So that's why that's a good example because that never came up in the discussion as far as I know That those letters have been lost to history

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But there are a bunch of Gospels that are not included in our New Testament, etc And we're going to talk about why those were not included and who decided that and when etc later on But to get to Jason's questions is it possible to have something that was inspired that is not preserved

42:52

I think theoretically it is possible But I can't know that for certain because I can't know if what Paul wrote was given by inspiration of God I can know that everything that he intended to preserve for us he has

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Only because it is yeah, we have nothing preserved for us that is not given by divine inspiration Right, there's nothing given by divine inspiration

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That's floating around out there that we know of that. We just say well that God wrote that and it's divinely authoritative

43:19

It's the product of inspiration, but we reject it Yeah, Peter Is there anything any recent discoveries of manuscripts that we didn't already have or know of?

43:43

No, nothing that we would consider inspired or authoritative because we go into what what is it that constitutes? What has been preserved and why has it been preserved?

43:50

We're gonna get into that question What if we discovered today a document? What if we discovered Paul's first Corinthians? Right, and it was actually first Corinthians What if we unearthed that in Corinth today in an archaeological discovery and it actually had

44:01

Paul's sweat and tears on it What if what if we found that document would we regard it as scripture? Would we add it to our scriptures?

44:10

Alright, we'll answer that later on And there's a reason why we'll there's a reason why we're answering later on we're building brick on brick and we got a we got

44:17

To get to that conclusion when we get to that conclusion, you'll see okay. Yeah, here's why we would not or would Destroy it

44:25

We add it. Okay so the the doctrine of inspiration reply refers to the original autographs and not to the copies or the translations now

44:35

We're out of time here I'll just quickly I just quickly deal with something real quick this pertains to the issue of translations and do we have a translation a particular translation of the scriptures today that is

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Authorized and inspired and given by divine inspiration and I'm not gonna pick on Josh's King James only background here

44:57

But there is a group of people within the King James only camp who would say that there is a that the King James Translation the 1611 authorized

45:04

God inspired translation is actually the inspired passage of scripture that the inspired translation and so that anything that is not the 1611

45:13

King James and by the way, King James only advocates don't actually read the 1611 translation

45:19

They read a later translation. But anyway, they don't that that that translation 1611 is actually the inspired

45:25

There is a group of people within the King James only movement who would say that God Reinspired did another act of inspiration in the 1611 translation to ensure that that version was exactly what

45:37

God wanted So they would say that the doctrine of inspiration applies to the original autographs

45:43

But then God reinspired it again to make sure that we had it in the English as an actual inspired document

45:51

Sorry what oh Okay, so then they would actually suggest

45:57

That we would take the 1611 and that that would be authority to go back and to correct

46:03

Greek and Hebrew manuscripts Based on the English translation of the 1611 Now that's some fringe

46:10

Wacko stuff, but those people exist. Okay, and that's what they believe. So when we talk about inspiration, we're not talking about the copies

46:17

Which yes, there are Manuscript errors in the cut in the copies. We're not talking about those We're not talking about any codex that came a hundred years later not talking about copies of the copies when we talk about inspiration

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We're talking about the autograph the piece of paper the Paul wrote on That is given by inspiration now the question that we have to answer the course of this is

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Has what has been preserved for us? Can we know for certain that it is what Paul wrote and that's

46:44

What we're looking at in the weeks ahead. Yeah, Pat Yeah Yeah, no

47:10

Yeah, and and even even taking into account textual variants which we'll look at later on We can still have that confidence that God has preserved for us exactly what he wrote for us through those original authors and The Dead Sea Scrolls helped demonstrate that yes

47:23

Brad Are the current translations of the

47:34

Bible considered part of the illumination process No, I wouldn't be included in what we talked about by illumination because that's what we're talking about with translation is that when we take a textual a

47:45

Textual manuscripts or the textual the original Greek and Hebrew and we translate that into English. Is that process accurate?

47:51

Are we accurately rendering from one language to another God's intended meaning now the people who do that translation?

47:58

they are required they have to understand and know the context because there are times when Translating a word or a phrase requires that you have some understanding of what the author is going through so those people who do the translation

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They have to do the hard work of figuring out what this passage means in its original context because it's not like you just take one word and you translate it into the next word and you take the next word and translate it and just do this all

48:19

The way through scripture. That's not how translations work sometimes it's a thought -for -thought rendering of it sometimes word -for -word sometimes you're trying to take something from the original and Translate it into an

48:28

English equivalent that would capture the meaning and communicate the meaning and and that's sometimes difficult We'll look at examples of that later on No, it's not part of the inspiration process.

48:40

No No, it's it's not in anything of what we're talking about here in terms of translation

48:48

All right, the kids are done back here. So one last thing and then we'll be done Inspiration number three is inexplicable.

48:54

There is a mystery here. And in what way did God do this? Did the what did the authors feel did they feel like they were under the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit? Did they know that they were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? The answer that is sometimes yes sometimes no What did it look like in the process of it those are there's mysteries here that we do not understand

49:11

Scripture tells us that God breathed out his word to us and that the scriptures are given by inspiration of God What exactly that looked like in terms of the human experience and the human writing and their awareness of what was going on at?

49:24

The time that we cannot answer Beyond some generalities that we'll look at in a couple of weeks

49:30

Okay, I think that that's it. Yes, Garrett Well, that's why

49:45

I said after that that sometimes the term inspiration can be used for the entire process But the one time that fail new stoss is used it's used of the graph a the writings

49:53

These writings were inspired the human instrument that humans were the instruments that did that but we can't

49:59

It is confusing to refer to the human instruments as the ones that are inspired since it's the scripture itself, which is

50:05

God -breathed It's not the instruments that were God -breathed It's the scripture that has been God -breathed the word inspiration scripture is used to the product not of the process or the person

50:14

It's used of the product and the one time it is used and so that's why I say we need to be careful that we just Have that in mind.

50:20

I know that if you said well, then it's by the writings were inspired I know that that's not heresy coming from you I know that what we would mean by that when we use that and I could use that here and we'd all understand we're talking

50:29

About but just for clarification. We're just kind of trying to be precise that we're talking about the product and not the person

50:36

Yeah. All right. Let's bow in prayer Matt really? Okay In our way of using that term under inspiration of the

50:49

Holy Spirit Yes, because the Spirit of God was moving men moved by the Holy Spirit So there is a spirit of God who is moving that man and the word of Peter uses there is

50:58

Carried along like wind carries along a sail these men were being driven by the Holy Spirit in the process

51:05

So they were being moved But what they were is not inspired what is written is inspired, but they were moved by the

51:12

Holy Spirit to write inspired writings Yeah, okay. Now we're praying close our eyes nobody in the questions

51:19

Father we're very grateful for the time that we've had here and helping us to think through these things and just pray that the result Would be equipping us to think clearly about your word and rightly about your word so that we may appreciate what it is that you

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Have given to us. Thank you for these graces And we ask your blessing upon our service and our time of fellowship to follow in Christ's name.