Psalm 12:6 — Ian Paisley

It is indeed a pleasure and privilege for me to minister to you at this annual general meeting of your society. I never remember a time in my life that I didn't know about this society. I was brought up in a godly home.

My father was a godly preacher of the doctrines of free and sovereign grace. And we knew the Trinitarian Bible Society from one of the first things we knew when we contemplated the work of societies doing the work of the Lord.

So it is a privilege for me today to be with you and to minister to you from God's holy and precious word. I would ask you to stand for prayer as we have a prayer before the preaching of the word. Let us stand.

I take the promised Holy Ghost, the blessed power of Pentecost, to fill me to the uttermost. I take. Thank God He undertakes for me. And the people of God said, Amen. Let's be seated. Psalm 12 and verse 6.

The Pure and Enduring Word of God

The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in the furnace of earth, purified seven times. The Bible stands out in sharp and stark contrast in this apostate age. In verse 1 of this psalm, the psalmist laments the scarcity of godly and faithful people.

We too can lament today the scarcity of godly and faithful people. Lord, says the psalmist, for the godly man ceases, for the faithful field from among the children of men. The faithful man, the godly man, is a temple of the book of God.

Where God's people are few, the word of God is subsequently scarce. Now this psalm talks about the attacks that are launched against the godly and against those who hold fast to His holy word. They speak vanity, every one with his neighbor, with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak.

The attacks on the word of God today are by the tongues of the ungodly. Their tongues bring forth flatteries of lips coming from double hearts. They speak proud things, they daily boast of their own conquest.

They defy the sovereign God of heaven and they cry out, as the psalmist tells us, Who is Lord over us? Who is Lord over us? They boast, they domineer and they threaten. What shall the child of God do in these circumstances?

He will get back to the Bible. He will get back to the word of God. We need to make the Bible our daily companion. We need it today as never before, for it alone can sustain our spirit and strengthen us in the conflict of the coming days.

My text today, like the Bible itself, is full of fat things, wine in the leaves, well refined. May God give us today a holy appetite for His holy word. I want to mention six very simple things here about the Bible.

The Communication of the Bible

First of all, I want you to notice the communication of the Bible. What does my text say? It says the words of the Lord. Did you ever think of it, that we mortal children of the dust, dust and ashes in the origin of our humanity, are privileged to possess the very words of the triune Jehovah God, the great I Am.

The one God of Israel, in the mystery of His triune being, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the eternal one in three and the eternal three in one, in all the unity of His mysterious being, has given to us His word.

Our hands have handled of the word of life. How wonderful that the great God of all the earth should come descend and float down the channel of sound to us through the ear and through the nerve and through the brain, His own most marvelous work.

He who spake the world out of the bosom of nothingness, He spake and it was done. He commanded it and it stood fast. He has spoken to us in the arms of birds and adjectives and adverbs, etc. He has conveyed to us the passion of His omnipotent heart, the purpose of His omniscient mind and the power of His omnipresent being.

To us, dust and ashes, this miracle of miracles. There is a great word in Isaiah chapter 31 and verse 2 and it tells me this. He will not call back His words. We rejoice. What God has said, He has said.

Nothing shall be added to it. Nothing shall be taken from it. And when the heaven passes away and the earth is no more, the word of the Lord shall endure forever. It is His word, God's precious word, forever sure.

What a word this is that God has used to communicate with us. The Bible is not only the inspired book when it was given, but now in the present tense, it is the inspired book. It is the same yesterday, today and forever.

No change, Jehovah, no. No change, the words of Jehovah, no. In the front page of all my Bibles, I write a text. It was printed by Dr. Ballinger, a former general secretary of your society, in his companion Bible.

Proverbs 6 verse 22. When thou goest, it shall lead thee. When thou sleepest, it shall keep thee. And when thou wakest, it shall talk to thee. What a book this is. It is good for us when we walk. It is good for us when we sleep.

And it is good for us when we awaken. It is the communicated word of God. No wonder Elizabeth Scott wrote the words, Eternal Spirit, t 'was thy breath the oracles of truth inspired, And kings and holy seers of old, with strong prophetic impulse fired, Filled with thy great almighty power, their lips with heavenly signs flowed, Their hands a thousand wonders rocked, with which bore the signature of God.

This book bears the signature. But let us turn from the communication of the Bible to the contents of the Bible. And we come to see that the Bible is described here as the words of the Lord. And as words that are tried in the furnace of earth and purified seven times.

And as pure words. Let me say, all the contents of the Bible are the word of God. Even the words which evil men spoke, which they uttered, God repeated to the divine penman, so that the record might be an infallible record of all facts of science, of all incidents in history, and of everything that God purposed to convey to his people.

Every word came from the mouth of God. Every word. Hence this Bible does not contain the word of God, but is rather in its entirety the word of the Lord. I must emphasize today that it is our duty to prize the total word of God.

The Equal Authority of the Old and New Testaments

We must not set aside or devalue any part of the book of God. We must denounce the blasphemy which states that some parts of this Bible are vastly superior to other parts of the Bible. Many would claim that the New Testament is vastly superior to the Old Testament.

The great Mr. Sturts Spurgeon said, I would not err by saying that in the Old Testament, you have more truth than in the New. For therein I would be falling into the evil which I must condemn. For this I will say, that they are of equal authority, and that they cast such light upon each other, that we could not spare either of them.

We need both the Old Testament and the New Testament. What therefore Spurgeon said, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. In the whole book, from Genesis to Revelation, the word of Jehovah is there.

End of quotation from Spurgeon. To distinguish parts of this Bible, by saying this is specially true, because these are the words that Jesus himself spoke, or to pin a tag on a certain doctrine, and say this is poly doctrine, or twin doctrine, this is a dangerous matter, which we find common in the writers of the scriptures today.

What is recorded here is God's word. It is the word of God the Holy Ghost. Spirit speaks through all the Bible, all of them. The Apostle John, in 1 John chapter 4 and verse 6, makes that very clear. He says, we are of God, he that knoweth God, hear of us.

He that is not of God, heareth not us. So the Apostle was not speaking of himself, nor none of the Apostles spoke of themselves, they spoke from God, and God's children hear the words of God. The Lord Jesus Christ put himself on the same level, in John's Gospel chapter 12 and verse 49, he said, for I have not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

The word of God is in no way affected by the medium through which it comes, nor is its value lessened in any way. Revealed truth in the Bible is all of the same quality. It is the word of God. So much for the contents of the Bible.

The Purity and Unity of Scripture

Let me draw your attention to the character of the Bible. What does this text say? It says the words of the Lord are pure words. Now the characteristics of God's word are very different. Some of them are words of consolation, some are words of exhortation, some are words of warning, some are words of rebuke, some are words of commendation, and some are words of promise.

But while their characteristics differ, their character is one. They are all pure words. The whole range of the Bible's word must never be separated from the one whole unified Bible. It is wrong to take a text and wrench it out of its context because that makes it become a pretext.

The Bible's unity must be preserved at all costs. The character of the Bible is it is all pure words. No word of God is to be prepared before another. It is a sinful habit to make preferences in the Holy Scripture.

We must and ought to love the entire law of God, not just parts of it. That is why we must be readers of the whole Bible, not readers of a Bible which we mutilate by our selective reading habits. My wife often says to me, you ought not to do the terrible things you do.

For she said, when you go into a preacher's study, you lift down his Bible and you look at it. And then you open it. And then you go through it. And then you start doing this to separate pages. And then you look at him and you say to him, do you really believe, brother, the whole Bible?

But why are some pages easy to open and some never opened at all? There is a sin among God's people who mutilate the Bible by their selective reading habits. You need to read the whole Bible. Yes. Consistently.

A Christian should read the Bible at least once every year. And a preacher should read it at least twice every year, if not a third time every year. This is the only book in the world that brings us the direct communication of the God we say we love and we honor.

And the God who sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. When you open your Bible in the future, do something. Make a request. Say, speak, Lord, for thy servant. And when you close the Bible, you make a response.

Here am I, for thou didst. The Bible is a good book. There is no foulness in the Bible. The character of the Bible, the character of the whole Bible, from Genesis to Malachi and from Matthew to the Revelation, the character is purity.

I have heard people protesting about the coarseness of certain words in our authorized version. And needless to say, I am an authorized version preacher. And I use nothing else in my pulpit. And we use nothing else in our public services.

I am reminded of the great C .H. Spurgeon, because to no man in the ministry do I owe more than Mr. Spurgeon. And he said this, the coarseness of translators is not to be set to the account of the Holy Spirit, but to the fact that the force of the English language has changed, and modes of expression, which were current at one period, become too gross for another.

Yet this I will assert. I have never yet met with a single person to whom the words of God have ever suggested any evil thing. I have heard a great many horrible things said, but I have never met with a case in which any man has been led into sin by a passage of the Holy Scripture.

Perversions are possible, but the book itself is preeminently pure. Details are given of very gross acts of criminality, but they leave no injurious impress upon the mind. The saddest story of Holy Scripture is a beacon, but it is never a lure to sin.

This is the cleanest, clearest, purest book extant among men. Nay, it is not to be mentioned in the same hour with the fabulous records which pass for holy books. This book, Spurgeon said, has come from God, and every word is pure.

To that statement of C. H. Spurgeon, I can say a hearty double amen. Amen and amen. The Bible is a good book. It has no tincture of foulness within it. It condemns all foulness. It never condones foulness.

The Infallibility and Truth of Scripture

But the Bible is a true book. It has no tincture of falsehood in it. It is as it declares itself to be, true from the beginning, and it is true all through to the very end. It is true in everything. Now, I don't judge the Bible.

The Bible judges me. I don't sip the Bible. The Bible sips me. There are those who substitute the judgment of man for the judgment of the Bible. I hold to the absolute infallibility of this book. I reject the infallibility of man, whether they live by the river, and occupy the people of the Antichrist or not.

I reject their claims to infallibility. And I reject the claims of those men, and because of their scholasticism, claim also infallibility. There is no infallibility of the Pope. There is no infallibility of human scholars.

But in this blessed book, I have the infallible word of the infallible God. I trust my soul and my eternity to this guide, supplied by heaven, and not on the mirage which rises from the misty swamps of apostate criticalism, or they are debtors of ecclesiastical infidelity.

Yet these apostates come, and they dare to tag their words as modern thought. They should be reported to the Department of Community Affairs for bogus tagging and labeling. I read the other day those great words of Joseph Hart, Say, Christian, wouldst thou strive in knowledge of thy Lord?

Against no scripture ever strive, but tremble at his word. If aught there dark appear, bewail thy want of sight. No imperfection can be there for all God's words. The scriptures and the Lord bear one most holy name.

The written and the incarnate word in all things are the same. For Jesus is the truth, as well the life and way, the two-edged sword that's in his mouth, shall all proud reasoners make. Why dost thou call him Lord, and what he says resist?

The soul that stumbles at the word offended is in Christ. How true. But the Bible is an almighty book. There is no failure within it. Nothing which the Bible has declared has failed, nor can fail, nor will ever fail.

God is faithful. He fulfills every jot and tittle of his own word. I can bear my glad testimony that after seventy-five years living upon this earth, after fifty-five years in the gospel ministry, after thirty-one years serving as a member of the Parliament of this United Kingdom, and twenty-two years as a member of the European Parliament, I have not found one word of God to feel.

I have seen the failures of men, great men and boasting men, but I have never seen one tiny word of Scripture ever to feel. Many times I have been very impatient. I would have desired different timings to the fulfillment of God's word, and different ways to its fulfillment, but in the end God's word stood true, and he has not failed in any one of his blessed promises.

I bear witness to that fact. In the worst hour of stormy testing, as long as you have but one single promise of God, your midnight of darkness will most certainly become your midday of divine deliverance.

Glory to God! His word is good. It is without fulfilled fileness. Glory to God! His word is true. It is without falsehood. And glory to God! His word is almighty. It is without failure. Let me turn now to the crucible of the Bible, a silver tride in a furnace of earth.

Scripture Tested in the Furnace of Opposition

Isn't it interesting God doesn't deal with paper money. God deals in the metal of redemption. The silver. God's standard is the silver standard. Now when we talk about gold and silver, we put always gold first, but God doesn't.

God puts the silver first. For God's standard is the silver of redemption. I have counted in my Bible 42 occurrences of this expression, silver and gold. And the silver always comes first. For as much as you know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your being conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

Satan and sinful men have put this Bible in the hottest of the fires that they were capable of kindling. The hottest fires kindled by the hottest coals of hell's villainy have been made a crucible for the destruction of the Bible.

Every device of satanic iniquity has been employed. And every scheme of man's depravity has allied itself with these devices in a common attack and target. The precious book of God. But the greatest fact in all the history of the Bible is the fact of the Bible's endurability and indestructibility.

This Bible will endure forever. And this book shall never ever be destroyed. Why is this Bible under such attack? Because the Bible forthrightly condemns sin. Therefore, the hatred of sinners has been hurled against it.

Because the Bible in plain and unmistakable language debases the pride of man. Proud men take it upon themselves to try to discredit it. Because the Bible uncovers the satanic underworld, it is the object of the diabolical attacks of Satan and his demons.

Because the Bible declares that salvation is of free grace alone, all false religions have sought to extinguish it. The false religions are all built on the same sand. Man's power to help himself. Man's power to save himself.

Bible religion is, man is lost. Man is dead. Man is damned. Except God comes in sovereign grace, and Christ speaks the effectual word, Come forth! And when He speaks that word, sinners come forth from the sepulcher of their sin to the embrace of Christ their Lord.

The Bible condemns every man and condones no man. It accuses every man, but excuses no man. It abases human reason and exalts revelation. It repudiates the natural and rejoices in the spiritual, glorifying not in the flesh, but in faith.

Attacked from all quarters, and giving no quarter, this Bible has an Ishmaelite experience. Its hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against it. But wonder of wonders, it continues to dwell in the midst of the brethren.

Princes, philosophers, preliates, politicians, poets, have all conspired against it. They have all sought to destroy it. This book has been insulted by the scorn of fools. It has become the jest of infidels and the joke of skeptics.

It has been assailed consistently and persistently by professed scholars. It has been made the butt of the critic. Assaulted by every known plan of hell, this Bible has come forth unscathed from that mighty inferno.

Like the three Hebrew children, it has been in the fire. But as I smell it today, there's not a smell of smoke upon it. It is the Bible of God. And those that trust in it will be like it. They shall be endued with the grace of everlasting life.

Do you know today no fire can be lit that will ever burn this Bible? Do you know today no steel will ever be forged or any other metal that will be able to scar it? No weapon has yet been developed that has ever discredited it.

The science has not yet been thought of that could demolish this Bible. The plan has not yet been devised that could annihilate it. The cunning of hell and the craft of the earth have combined against this blessed book of God.

But it stands unmoved. It is, as W .E. Gladstone, one of England's great prime ministers, said, the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. As the Bible has stood the hottest broad sides of hell, thank God it will not be affected by the pop guns of so-called modern thought.

Will the old book stand when the higher critics state that grave errors are discovered in its page? Will it save the sinful soul? Will it make the wounded whole? Will its glorious truth abide from age to age?

Will its message still abide when the scientists decide that its record of creation is untrue? Tell us the ascent of man is by evolution planned. Will its principles the sinful heart renew when infidels parade the mistakes that Moses made?

When the truth of revelation they deny, will the Ten Commandments still the demands of justice fill? Will its words support us when we come to die? Yes! Yes! Yes! The Word of God shall stand, though a seal on every hand.

Its foundations are eternally secure. It will bear the critics' test. And the idol scoffers jest. Its saving truth forever shall endure. The Bible is the Word of God. And it remains, with the passing and injuries of time, a temple unproclaimed by the foot of the enemy.

It is a building of God amidst the crumbling ruins of the sanctuary. My Bible. Give me my Bible. The conquest of the Bible is also in this text. It's purified seven times. This Bible is a conquering book.

The Conquering Power of the Word

Every testing situation it conquers in its majestic right. It goes forth conquering and to conquer. It conquers the resistance of the sinner, the despair of the penitent, the singularity of each individual's sinful case.

It conquers the torment of the soul's troubles, the perplexity of the future, and it conquers the last enemy that shall be destroyed, which is death. No wonder, for did God not tell us in its very pages that He has magnified His Word above all His name.

Finally, the challenge of the Bible. There is a word in Psalm 119 and verse 140. It is a complementary verse to my text. It says, The Word, thy Word, is very pure. Thy Word is very pure. This Bible brings a challenge to each one of us.

We need, first of all, to ponder the Bible. A casual acquaintance with the Bible is sinful. This book of God must be our delight, our meditation day and night. That note was struck from the first of this meeting today.

We need not only to ponder the Bible, we need to put our trust in the Bible. It is a Bible that creates saving faith. Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. And if we do not have this creative faith, born through the power of the Word, we can never embrace Christ as He is freely offered to us in the Gospel.

We need not only to ponder the Bible and put our trust in the Bible, we need to publish the Bible. We must get the scriptures out. I commend the work of this great society and its dedication to publish the uncorrupted Word of God.

May God give it long life. May God bring in the finances and bring in the personnel to keep that work going throughout the whole world. And I'm glad to report to you that my church in Belfast has distributed in the city of Belfast almost 200 ,000 copies of John's Gospel.

Into every home, Armour Road, right in the heart of republicanism. The Short Strand, right in the heart of republicanism. West Belfast, the capital of republicanism. Into every home has gone the Word of God.

And it has had a most amazing reception. The people on summer days, as our workers called, with John's Gospels, they came out and sat on the wall of their little gardens and opened the Word of God. Not one person, but scores of people reading the Word of God.

And as they brought back that good news to me, I said, Lord, the entrance of Thy Word giveth light. May the light of the glorious Word of God shine into their hearts. It's what Protestants need. It's what Romanists need.

And all people need the Word of God. Let us publish it. And then we need to proclaim it. We need to go out to the world and proclaim the words of this life in this book. If these words are not proclaimed, their power will not be felt.

So it is our duty to proclaim the Bible. But we must do something more. We must practice the Bible. If our lives give the lie to what we say, all our activities will be in vain. And then we need to preserve this book.

A great minister of Christ, Reverend W .J. Greer, preached my ordination sermon some 54 years ago. And he said this. He said, Ian, remember what Samuel Rutherford, the sturdy common hunter, said. Give not one hair's breadth of God's Word away, for it is not yours, but God's.

Let's stand to the defense of the Bible. And finally, we need to push the Bible. We have this banner to display. Let us lift it high at all times, pushing its glorious gospel and its most glorious Savior.

Let us not push ourselves, but let us push our Master and our King. This must not be done in a corner. It must not be done in secretly. It must be pushed publicly and prayerfully and untiringly. God has and will magnify His Word.

And as John Kent wrote, let Revelation's glory shine and spread from sea to sea till reason stoops to faith divine and owns her sovereign sway. God's Word shall prevail. It is going forth, conquering and to conquer.

And we shall see it one day in the full strength of its reigning power. May God speak that day. Let us bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, for Thy Word this day, we give Thee thanks. What a book we have.

What a precious book. What an infallible book. What a mysterious book. What a divine book. What an everlasting book. Oh God, may we love the book. And may we love the author of the book. And the savior of the book.

And the commandments of the book. And the gospel of the book. Make us dedicated, men and women. And may we ever have the best of all books in our hand. And the best of all biblical truths in our heart.

May we hide it in our heart that we might not sin against Thee. Bless the work of this society. Bless every portion of scripture that it gives us. Bless the nations of the world that feel the impact of its witness.

And grant that we shall see our time of reviving from the presence of God. And the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. For Jesus' sake, and the people of God's sake.

Amen.