Bibliology | Preservation of Scripture, Pt. 3 (02/25/2001)

I give you two choices. You can come and sing a special or you can fix that air conditioner where it'll come on.

Okay. I got it all set except I didn't get it where the heat, the heat's still blinking and I need the cool to, don't we need this little air moving around?

I'm a little warm. Of course I can take this off but I'll do that. I don't want to freeze you. I think

I almost had the little computer set and I ran out of time there. Well let's get moving because we have a lot to do before lunch.

We're back to our study of systematic theology. We're on bibliology which is the study of what the

Bible says about the Bible. Happens to be one of my favorite topics. Is that louder than usual?

Maybe not. Seems like it is, doesn't it? I know why because in the winter we don't want that blowing up here.

Now we want it but that's okay we'll get that fixed. We don't want a lot of it today.

This is one of my favorite topics and I remember as a brand -new

Christian that someone gave me a study Bible and that particular study

Bible had a whole section in the back on what the Bible says about the Bible. That was one of the first things

I studied and it was a real blessing. We have studied a lot of things so far under this topic, inspiration, revelation, and so forth and we find our way to the topic of preservation.

We started that two or three weeks ago and we're going to continue with that theme today.

Since it's been a couple of weeks and since we have a different crowd than we had I want to do a little bit of review.

This message this morning will primarily be a scriptural message which you probably say amen to that.

That's what it ought to be, scriptural message but it won't have a whole lot of history in it. We're going to get to some history and we'll have to take one

Sunday where we do discuss quite a bit of history for it to make sense to you and so you know what's going on.

But I want to be so grounded in the scriptures before we do that because if not the enemy could gain a foothold.

We must know absolutely what God says about this issue of preservation. When I say preservation of the scriptures that's different than the inspiration of the scriptures.

We talked about that in the last study you may remember. Inspiration is the God -breathing of the scriptures from his dimension outside of time into this dimension on the earth for his people.

That's when he inspired the scriptures. That happened and when Paul wrote the original epistle to the

Roman Church that was the inspired scripture. Some call it the original, some call it the autograph and let me ask you a question.

Do we have the original anywhere on the earth today as far as we know? We do not do we?

It's almost like the Ark of the Covenant. It's as if the Lord removed it so we wouldn't worship it.

But we do hold his word so highly. In fact even the Lord said he elevated it above his name which is an amazing verse.

So I don't think we have to worry too much about worshiping. I think the main problem we have is people don't esteem the word highly enough.

I don't think we have a problem of worshiping it. Do you? We have the opposite problem if anything.

But anyway if that's true that the originals are no longer with us and yet we know they were inspired and we believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of the scriptures which we've already studied which means every word.

It means the words and then plenarily means every word is breathed by God so that even the little words are important.

Haven't you found that to be true in your own study? Sometimes the word the or the word a can make a difference and so the little words they have to be from God.

Now let me ask you this if we don't have the originals which were absolutely perfect to the to the dot of the

I and the cross of the T but we don't have them anymore how do we know that the

Bible we have two thousand years later is the one God wants us to have?

That's what we're studying in this in this group of studies. It's a fascinating study but I want to tell you this it's not talked about in hardly any church.

It's discussed really very little in the seminaries nowadays because there's no argument anymore.

One side has won. I happen to think it's the wrong side but we're studying that. We'll let you decide.

I mean it's you basically have a couple of theories as far as how the seminaries would teach it but it isn't discussed a lot but I'll tell you it's as mysterious as some of the doctrines that you've studied before such as the doctrine of the

Trinity, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God versus the will of man and the responsibility of man.

How can the two be side by side and both be true? This study is just that mysterious and yet the

Lord has laid a foundation in the scriptures and I want to go back to that one more time this morning before we get into the details of this study and so let's go to the scriptures go with me to Psalm 119 and verse 52 and we're going to review just a little bit the message that I preached on this using these scriptures and I'm going to go fast through this because some of it is review if you want to go to the scriptures go ahead and try but I'm not we've already done this once so I'm not as concerned that you go right to the scriptures.

I want to review and solidify what we've already discussed. First of all there are seven truths there are seven truths with regard to the preservation of God's Word.

Not the giving of it, not the inspiration of it, not the penning of it, not the originals, not the autographs but what you have today.

There are seven truths about how God has preserved His Word and that God has preserved

His Word. The first truth and I'm going to give you these with words that I think will help you remember them.

We'll use a little bit of alliteration couldn't do it totally but the first is

His Word is promised to be secure eternally. So you might write number one secure eternally and we get that from Psalm 119, 152 which says concerning thy testimonies

I have known of old that thou hast founded them forever.

Now the word founded we're going to use that for our second point here in a minute.

For this first point we're going to use two words in this verse. The first one is where it says I have known of old and the second idea is at the end where it says thou has founded them and the phrase forever.

Now what's interesting about it is that the phrase of old is one Hebrew word and the phrase forever is a different one and when you put them together what we see is that the

Lord's Word starts if you remember from one end of the spectrum and goes out if you go back to where time started and go just beyond that you fall into a dimension where there is no time where it's the

I am is there. That's where it started and then it goes right through time and goes out the other end that's the first word by the way which is kedem which means the front of or the place where time began.

It's spelled Q -E -D -E -M kedem. So the word literally started back before time began it is an eternal book.

Now it goes out the other side when you get to this word that says forever because it's the familiar word olam

I say familiar because we've studied it in other studies before olam which means the vanishing point.

It goes right out to the edge of time going this way into the future and drops off the other side and vanishes into eternity and so the

Word of God is secure eternally. You can't change the

Word of God. Now man can try and has and that's what this study is all about but God will not allow it to be changed and that's our first point.

Second point is this the Word of God is settled and we find that in the same verse Psalm 119, 152 where it says it is founded.

This word founded is yasad. It's a wonderful word because it means to sit down together and it implies the counsel of God.

It implies the Godhead before time the before time counsel of God where things were determined and so this is a book which is determined.

It is predetermined. It is already done before time starts because it starts on that end of time.

It was given down into time through inspiration. It will be preserved through time by preservation.

It will go out the other end in its perfect state because it is secure eternally and it is settled by the counsel of God.

It's interesting that this word yasad has been translated at least one place in the Old Testament is the word consult or counsel.

So it means to settle. The third thing that we see and you have to go to Psalm 119 verse 89 to see this one is that it is established.

So it's secure. It is settled. It is established or established but I like the word established because it's a stronger word and when you go to Psalm 119, 89 it says forever

O Lord thy word is settled in heaven and this word settled is not sab spelled

N -A -T -S -A -B and in our lettering that's how it's pronounced in the

Hebrew and it means established. What's interesting though it's translated and used to mean this exact thing the best state.

Now you can find that in your Strong's Concordance. If you have one you look up the word not sab and you find that it means best state.

Now best state means a lot to me in the English. I like that translation.

So established is it means the same thing don't you see? I mean it has been set and it has been established as God's Word.

It is in its best state. It cannot be perfected. The third

I'm sorry the fourth thing that we see is it is God's sure word.

We find that in Matthew 24 35. Heaven and earth shall pass away but Jesus said my word shall not pass away.

In 1st Peter 1 23 so we see there that Jesus says his word is sure.

So it's secure from eternity to eternity through time. It is settled it is established and now we see

Jesus says that it is sure. The fifth thing is it's pure. I can't alliterate anymore but I can rhyme now.

It's sure and it's pure. Okay we get the pureness of it from 1st Peter 1 23.

Being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible incorruptible of Thartos in the

Greek language. Undecaying in essence. There is no unclean matter in it to make it go bad.

You understand? We talked about that once but it's pure and the

Psalm 12 6 and 7 we're gonna go to that for our next point which is point number six but the first part of it verifies point number five it talks about its purity.

It says the words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times.

I love the fact that it says in the furnace of earth because that implies that humanity was involved in the giving of the word the inspiration but also in the preservation of his word and we'll talk about that later as far as how

God has done this. But do you see that isn't that beautiful? It's tried seven times but it's in a furnace of earth the earthy part implies us the

God's people who who some of which were chosen through whom

God inspired the word and pinned it others were they were chosen through time to preserve it through copying it and copying it accurately and so now the sixth point is that it's protected and if you're in Psalm 12 you just go right on to the next verse which is verse 7 thou shalt keep them

O Lord and let's stop there a minute the word keep means shalmar shalmar which means to hedge about but now listen to this this is very very important if you don't get these concepts from the scriptures you're you're going to you will not make it through this study you you'll

Satan will come to you and bother your mind and that's not the purpose of this the purpose of this is to secure your hearts and minds and the fact that you have the

Word of God today so you have to understand God's promises before we move on this promise is very important because it says in Psalm 12 7 thou shalt keep them notice it doesn't say it them is important because that's where we get the idea of verbal plenary inspiration then means the words the individual words are kept the word keep in the

Hebrew is shalmar which means to hedge about but it literally means listen to this to guard and attend to that is an active word it place it does not place

God listen to me as the one who gave his word down into the earth to man and then sat over here and folded his arms just like some people think he does with everything else that he's not sovereign they think he just made everything he stepped aside over here and said what's gonna happen tomorrow yeah well there's a good person

I think I'll elect him oh there's a guy who believes in me I would like him because I saw him do it he didn't do that with his word either he did not use the

Holy Prophets of old and give it down in a perfect state it says in the

Bible in Psalm 12 7 that he shall Mars his word he attends to it moment by moment why would we think that every petal of a flower that moves is under the hand of God and every molecule in our body is held together by the

Lord Jesus of all of whom all things consist and in our children's lives and safety are in his hands our spouses fidelity and lives and safety are in his hands and in our mission in life is in his hand but he just goes like this to his word and hopes it makes it

I can't believe that especially when the Bible says it's not true the

Bible says he keeps it he guards it and now that's the sixth one so now we have it secure eternally comes out from one side goes out the other it's it's an eternal book it is settled by the counsel of God it is established in its best state this is all from word studies it is sure it is pure and it is protected and the last idea comes out of verse 7 also because Psalm 12 7 says thou shalt keep them

O Lord thou has preserved them from this generation forever a lot of information there that's very important in this study the word preserved is going to give us our seventh point but notice that it says from this generation forever that brings it down into time wouldn't you agree if all we had was the verse in Psalm 119 89 it says forever

O Lord thy word is settled in heaven I would be a little bit disturbed because I'd be thinking well okay it's settled in heaven but I'm on the planet is it settled down here but God brings this information in chapter 12 verse 7 from generation to generation

I will keep it I will attend to it I will guard it I will put a hedge about it and that's in time generation to generation to generation generation like I said it's gonna start over here before time but it's gonna move through time safely it's gonna go out the other end and it's the same it's his word and it brings us to this last word preserved thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever so lastly it's preserved so you put all seven of those together it is secure it is settled it is established in its best state it is sure it is pure it is protected it is preserved do you have that do we have that because we got to have that before we move one step further you can't go with me if you're not here do you believe it's true do you believe

God can do this all right let me ask you this do you believe he could do it through earthen vessels okay because if you don't you're gonna be in trouble here in a minute okay now last time we started a process which

I'm not going to review we don't have time but we will be giving these out so it'll all be here but we started talking a little bit about a brief history of manuscript manuscript transmission or manuscript evidence and we went down through and we discussed some very interesting aspects of different persons who began to claim they were correcting the

Bible that's what the modern scholars say they're doing actually they're changing it but they say they're correcting it to make you feel like you're getting a better one now let me ask you this if God is keeping it why do they have to correct it you might say well that's how

God keeps it is these people correct it well I've got some questions for you to answer in just a few minutes but we studied some of these things we brought it all the way down to the

Vaticanus and Sinaticus and pointed out that the Westcott Hort theory which is predominantly used in all the modern versions other than the

King James version all the modern versions use their line of manuscripts and we talked a little bit about their lives pointed out they were merry worshippers we pointed out that one of them was involved in witchcraft and so forth they were not what you and I would consider to be believers at all and yet all the seminaries today most of the

Bible colleges today except for a few except their theories and what's interesting is there is really no as far as I can tell are very few maybe not any living scholars who are proponents of the older view that we're going to be discussing it's interesting though that the

Bible that came from a view that was different than the Westcott Hort view that King James version was the one that God has blessed in history you can go you can follow the line through the traditional texts the received text comes down to Martin Luther's German Bible as renaissance came to the world like came in both the scientific arena but also in the religious arena as they pulled out of the

Roman Catholic Church the Bible that Martin Luther had was the same as your King James Bible only it was in German it was not like the modern translations that we have because they come from two different lines of manuscripts the one that's in the

Martin Luther's Bible and many many other as you trace the line of godly people all the way back to within a hundred and fifty years after Christ to the

Waldenses and and some of the Italian the Italic Church which we'll discuss we'll discuss the

Italic version a little bit all of those are the same as the Textus Receptus that the King James comes from and that is the

Bible that was used by Billy Sunday with over two million people recorded that came to know the Lord through his preaching of that version of the

Scriptures over a million under Dwight Moody over a million under Wesley Whitfield same number under Mordecai Ham and Spurgeon they all use the received text there is no recorded evidence in history of anyone ever using the other line of manuscripts that all our modern versions come from in any revival of whatsoever resulting that is the fact of history now we went into a brief discussion at that point of manuscript transmission and that's the part that will let you get the other study to review that but I wanted to refresh your minds on those those issues so let me continue then with further study of the evidence before us the manuscripts that we have and I'm not going to go into detail today because we're almost out of time

I wanted to stick mostly with the Scriptures today we'll take a look at that we will just begin it today the place

I want to start is really kind of in the middle of this study on what evidence do we have and it deals with all the manuscripts and you basically have about six or seven different sources and I'm going to skip right now to the fourth one which is called the church fathers the reason

I want to skip to that to start is going to give you a little bit of a framework to kind of get a general idea we won't get into the specifics today but I want you to get the general idea because this is deep information it's difficult to follow it extremely difficult so if we'll get a general outline it really helps to put it in place so I'm going to talk about the church fathers the reason they're important they're not like the gospel because they weren't even all saved but it is important because sometimes they'll have a sermon an old sermon you can go find that an early church father wrote that maybe lived only 150 years after Christ died and it will contain a verse just like when we preach today it'll have

Bible verses so you can go back and find if a verse agrees with the Bible you have or if it's been removed by the modern translations if it's been removed you have to ask why if a preacher was preaching at 150

AD why is it not in the modern translation and they're saying well the ancient better manuscripts don't contain it then how did the preacher get it 150

AD that sort of concept is why this is important but I'm not going to go completely into that today what

I want to give you is the three divisions of the church fathers now you might you don't have to jot it down you're gonna get this outline in the next couple of weeks but sometimes it helps me remember when

I jot things down anyway so you might want to the first division is the Western division of the

Church Fathers now don't try to write these names down because you will get this handout later but that's

Irenaeus some of these names you will have heard Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome, and Augustine from the

Western group of Church Fathers this predominantly is what we would think of as the budding

Roman Catholic Church with its emphasis on tradition rather than on the

Word of God so if you have Church Fathers or manuscripts that come from this family it's interesting not only do the are the

Church Fathers divided into these three divisions but but the scholars divide the manuscripts predominantly in these three same three divisions that's why

I'm giving it to you now but if you see something coming out of this tradition you have to understand it has a strong influence from Roman Catholic thought the

Vaticanus as I've already told you is called that because it came from the Vatican library was found in the 1400s in the

Vatican library in almost perfect condition dates back to about 350 AD but anyway that's from the

Western tradition now it's interesting out of those names that I mentioned Tertullian is an exception to the rule because late in his life he left the

Roman Catholic Church he was about 150 AD he was one of the first people to he was like he was like a few thousand years before Martin Luther he did the same thing

Martin Luther did he came out from him and joined a different group that was not called the Catholic group so he is an exception and he is more trustworthy for that reason

Tertullian remember that name second group is called the

Alexandrine fathers Alexandrine fathers or Alexandrian fathers this includes

Clement origin which we've studied already and he is the really bad one he is responsible for nearly every corruption that you'll find in any

Bible on the earth today origin is his name you won't find him in heaven unless he got saved on his deathbed but somehow

I sense that he probably was Satan's seed because he corrupted God's Word with a butcher knife and his name was origin he's one of the

Alexandrine fathers another one is Didymus and in Athanasius and in Cyril C -Y -R -I -L you would have heard of some of those the

Alexandrine group is from Egypt obviously and they're very similar to our modern style of textual critics they were not necessarily saved men but they were highly educated used scientific methods the same methods you would use to determine if say a book by Plato were accurate or not textual criticism they use these things in some cases they were heretical for example origin the one who's responsible for the most changes in the scriptures believe that Jesus Christ was a created being he was he did not believe

Jesus was God so he was a heretic so these we would just call them the scholarly revisers that's how long ago it started the third group is called the

Antiochian fathers sometimes called the Syrian fathers it produces what we sometimes call the

Byzantine text it's all the same from the same part of the world the Antiochian fathers now when

I start naming these you will have heard of some of them because some of them are in direct line with the Apostles and I'm going to go into a little bit of scripture on this and then we'll be finished for this morning so I'm not going to take you any deeper so don't worry we're we're there we're in the water and we're swimming we're not going to dive much deeper today but I want to focus on this group the

Antiochian fathers let me give you the names Ignatius Polycarp anybody ever heard of Polycarp Lucian Diodorus Chrysostom you've heard me quote from him before in Theodoret or Theodorae those all lived from 35

AD up to through the year 457 AD and they were from the

Antiochian fathers which means the Syrian part of the world you hear of Antioch in the scriptures in fact

I want us to go to the scriptures at this point go to Acts chapter 13 in verse 1

I'm going to show you two important things and then I want to make a point and we'll be through the the the predominant concept in those who determine what is the

Word of God today who I believe are in error predominantly because their their methods are wrong but their method is to use what they call textual criticism and they're always striving to come up with what they call a neutral text which is which they would say has not been tainted by anything no corruptor ever got to it we're going to judge everything by that text the predominant view as according with Westcott and Hort was that the

Vaticanus was the neutral text which is from the Vatican library and so forth you know a little bit of the history we'll go into more detail on that later

I believe that that's false I actually believe the Vaticanus my personal belief after my studies is that it is part of that its origin was from the man named origin when he wrote his epics hapless

I can't say it it's funny I just drew a blank on it I won't try to say it right now because this is on tape we'll get to it a little bit later

I'm tongue -twisted on it starts with an H has an X in it and ends with an

A you'll know it when we get to it but when he wrote that it had four columns where each column differed so it's kind of like if you bought a parallel Bible today and you got four columns they don't say the same thing

I don't know if you ever thought about that or not but if the words are inspired and the words are kept by God that should bother you that they're all different because that means you don't know which one's it so how do you go what are you gonna teach your children and your grandchildren what are you gonna live by you say well the basic stuff's all there yeah you got to admit 90 % of it's got to be there nobody'd call it a

Bible but it's the 10 % that I worry about the little bit of leaven that leavens the whole lump as Jesus says so anyway they think that as they come to this study and they're going to use textual criticism and they're going to use this neutral text which is the

Vaticanus and they're going to judge thousands of other manuscripts that may agree and they won't use that word anyway because the neutral text doesn't have that word that's how they do this and they believe that that's the way that God preserved it if that's true then we did not have the

Word of God really until the time of Westcott and Hort which was in the 1800s so that means all of the church before that had a corrupted

Bible all of their great revivals all the people who were burned at the stake for translating the

Bible into English so forth they didn't have the right Bible anyway I find that hard to believe but that's what they would have that's the conclusion you would have to draw you would also have to draw this conclusion if Westcott and Hort are correct then

God did not keep his word because it obviously wasn't kept when they found it and they had to fix it

God was not attending to it for thousands of years until they found it for almost 1800 years

God did not attend to it so he had to have these unbelievers I'm telling you they were unbelievers to fix it now that is one theory for how we get our

Bible I don't buy it but it is one and it is the predominant theory by all living scholars and even the good seminaries and unfortunately even some of the

Bible colleges that you would esteem highly in our country but it's usually because the men haven't done a study like we're doing right here together if they would just do this study they'd change their mind

I really really believe it they accepted what they heard in seminary and they never looked into it that's what

I believe so let me go to the and show you why it is and why it's important to understand that if you're going to follow

God's line of scriptures you cannot use their theory because you cannot be neutral let me ask you neutral means this if you had several people sitting on the front row excuse me

I don't mean to be talking about you too but if you had several in the front row and you had some godly people will let that you'd be y 'all and then you had a murderer and you had a thief and an embezzler and prostitute sitting on the front they all were copying

Bibles if I'm neutral I will not wait any of those any heavier than the others are you following me

I mean this this one over here may be the oldest and the prostitute copied it and this one over here that the godly people maybe a thousand years down in history and they were copying it but I know they were godly and I've got my hands on this one and I know this was a person who doesn't believe

Jesus is God but it's older now the neutral would say I will use this one because I can't

I have to be fair across the board I don't wait any of them any heavier than others but this one's older so I'm gonna use it

I can't buy that now let me show you why you have these three families the

Western which is predominantly a Roman Catholic tradition you have the Alexandrian which comes out of Egypt and which is a scholarly an unsaved scholarly approach and then you have the

Antiochian now let me show you where Antioch is in the world picture a world map and this is where these documents mostly come from and it's this place mentioned here in Acts chapter 13

I want you to notice who these people are I mean these are the people who started making these copies this is where this tradition in this line of manuscripts started these are the first people who copied them and they passed it to their children their grandchildren their grandchildren and so forth forth now there were in the church that was in Antioch and that is the part of the world where these lines of manuscripts come and that's why they're called the

Antiochian fathers or the Assyrian text the Antiochian text it

Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas you ever heard of him and Simeon it was called

Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Mannion which had been brought up with Herod the

Tetrarch and Saul as they ministered to the Lord and fasted the

Holy Ghost said separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work wherein to I have called them and they fasted and prayed laid hands on them and they sent them away the first recorded missionaries listen we're about through let's pay attention the first recorded missionaries in history came from this church they were sent out after fasting and praying and this is the church that began to copy the

Word of God and this is where it started with this line now turn to Acts 11 26 for me

Acts 11 26 and we when he had found him he brought him unto

Antioch and it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church and taught much people so this church was discipled by the

Apostle Paul and the disciples were there first called

Christians now I want you to remember that this is the area the geography from which the

Syrian text sometimes called the Byzantine text are the

Antiochian text it's all the same thing this is where it comes from now let me just ask you a logical question would you think that you would wait a manuscript that comes from that group of people

Bible believing soul winning Bible preaching people heavier than you would a manuscript that comes from the

Vatican library or that comes from Alexandria in Egypt what does the

Bible say about Rome in Revelation it calls it the city of seven hills what does it say about Egypt what does the

Bible say about Egypt what does it typify throughout the Bible the world system and then you have