The Bible On Inspiration, Part 2

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The Promises of the New Covenant, Part 3 – Hebrews 8:12

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All right, let's open with a word of prayer before we begin. And before we do that, I'm gonna read to you 2

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Peter chapter one, verses 16 through the end of the chapter. This is a passage that describes

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God's inspiration of scripture. 2 Peter chapter one, verse 16. For we did not follow cleverly devised fables 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 rises in your hearts.

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But know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own 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. All right, let's pray together. Oh Lord, we recognize our dependence upon you to understand your word correctly and to think clearly and to think in a way that honors and glorifies you and we pray that you would help us to do that today.

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Inform us doctrinally what inspiration means and help us to come to a greater understanding of and appreciation for your word and what you have given to us and the treasure that is scripture.

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Steal our hearts with these truths we pray and make us and cause us to rest upon them and to rely upon your word and only your word as a source of all truth pertaining to life and godliness.

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Be glorified through this time and our teaching, instruction, and our listening and interaction together we pray in Christ's name, amen.

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All right, we're in lesson three, inspiration, what the Bible claims. Lesson two was a look at the doctrine of inspiration proper, what we mean and what we don't mean when we say that scripture is inspired by God.

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And so we're looking now at what the Bible says concerning itself and we looked last week at Old Testament claims of divine inspiration.

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We looked at New Testament claims regarding the Old Testament inspiration and then we looked at New Testament claims for divine inspiration.

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So the pattern is rather predictable. We've seen that the Old Testament claims to be the word of God. Then we see that the authors and the persons in the

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New Testament, Jesus and the apostles, regarded the Old Testament as the word of God. And then we see that Jesus and the authors of the

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New Testament regarded the revelation of the New Testament as the word of God. So that's the foundation, that's the pattern that we're building here.

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Today we're on page eight and we're picking up halfway through the lesson, we're looking at number five, the

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New Testament evidence for New Testament inspiration. So there are two evidences for Old Testament inspiration.

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Number one, the fact that the Old Testament claims to be the word of God and it gives evidences of the fact that it is divinely inspired.

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But then second, that the New Testament authors and Jesus quoted from it and referred to it, referenced it as the word of God.

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That's an evidence of Old Testament inspiration, the fact that Jesus and the apostles regarded it as such. And then we looked at New Testament claims of inspiration, now we're looking at evidences that the

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New Testament claims of inspiration are true. So that's letter five, New Testament evidence for New Testament inspiration.

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So letter A under that is that the New Testament writings were read in the early church. And I mentioned this last week and we briefly looked at it, the custom of the early church, just as it was the custom in the synagogue, was that every week when the people of God got together, they would read the writings of God, the scriptures.

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And this was true in the synagogues when the Jews would gather together, they would open up the scroll. Do you remember the account in Luke chapter four?

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I think it is when Jesus walks into the synagogue and he opens up the scroll of Isaiah and he reads from the scroll and rolls it back up and hands it to the attendant and sits down.

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This was the custom in the synagogues when the Jews would gather together, they would open up the scrolls, the parchments, and they would read from the

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Old Testament. Well, in the New Testament era, the apostles commanded that the same thing be done in the churches regarding some of the

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New Testament writings. So, for instance, Christians continued that practice and we see it in 1 Timothy chapter four and Colossians chapter four, where Paul gives commands to Timothy that his writings be read when the church gathered together.

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Do you remember we talked about that last week? What would you think if I commanded that you read my writings when we get together as a church?

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You would think that that was arrogant and completely over the line, and it would be, unless what I wrote was scripture. And so Paul commanded that his own writings, his own letters be read in the public gathering of the worship services.

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We have evidence that this was done so, and Colossians chapter four is another example of this where Paul says, when you get together, read what

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I have written to you, and then you read the letter that I wrote to the Laodiceans, and you make sure that the letter that I wrote to you is read in Laodicea.

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Paul wanted his letters to be read in multiple churches, and so that was, in essence, a command to copy his letters and to circulate them amongst the churches and to make sure that the churches read them when the churches gathered together for public worship.

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So that's the first evidence that the New Testament regarded itself and the New Testament writers regarded themselves as divinely inspired.

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The second one, letter B, is the New Testament writings were circulated widely, and again, we get this in Colossians chapter four.

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Paul's saying, you make sure you read the, let's, I'm gonna start again. See, I have to be at a certain speed when

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I hit the worship service, and so I need to try to ramp up, and it's sometimes too early. You make sure that you read the letter that I wrote to the

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Laodiceans, and you make sure that this letter is read among them. Paul wanted his writings circulated in the early church.

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Letter C, the New Testament was gathered into collections. Peter makes reference in 2 Peter chapter three of Paul's writings.

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There seems to be evidence that the New Testament church, even before the first century was over, gathered the writings of certain apostles into collections, where you could gather together, for instance, the writings of John and have those bound together.

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You could gather together the writings of Peter or the writings of Luke or the writings of Paul. There's evidence that in the early church, even before 100

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A .D., that they recognized the inspiration, the divine authority of these men, and gathered their writings together and circulated them amongst the churches.

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Letter D, the New Testament books are quoted as scripture. We saw that in 1 Timothy chapter five, verse 18, where Paul quotes

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Luke and saying scripture says that a laborer is worthy of his wages. He's not quoting anything from the

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Old Testament. He's quoting something that Luke said, that Luke records that Jesus said. So there's Paul quoting Luke as scripture.

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And then we see that Peter referred to Paul as inspired, when he said of Paul's writings that the false teachers twist them just as they do the rest of the scriptures.

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Peter recognizing Paul spoke by divine inspiration and that Paul's writings were scripture. You see it in a quotation between 2

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Peter and Jude. In 2 Peter chapter three, since I'm there,

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I'll read it. 2 Peter chapter three, verse two, says that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the

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Lord and Savior spoken by our apostles. Know this, first of all, that in the last days, mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts.

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That was written before Jude. Jude, later on, in writing about false teachers, quotes Peter as if Peter was authoritative in scripture.

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So we have evidence within the New Testament that they quoted one another as if they were quoting scripture.

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And letter five, letter E, sorry, number five under number five, letter E under number five. Are we all up to speed?

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Yep. The New Testament is quoted as scripture by the early church fathers. Every one of the New Testament writers is quoted as divinely authoritative by an apostolic father.

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That is the leaders of the Christian church within the first 100 to 200 years after the death of the apostles.

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So we're talking about, say, 70 AD all the way up until 250, 300 AD. Those immediately post -apostolic church fathers, all of them quote, they quote all of the

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New Testament authors as divinely authoritative and inspired. And some of these men who wrote knew the apostles personally and they regarded them as inspired authors of scripture.

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All right, any questions about that before we move on? So that is the New Testament evidence for New Testament inspiration.

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So we're making an internal case that this book not only claims to be divinely inspired but it gives evidences that it is such.

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Yeah, Brad. Okay, so the question is, were any of the early church fathers quoting passages that are not regarded today as inspired or preserved in our canon?

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I'm gonna have to say I don't know for certain on that. What I do know is that every book that we regard as inspired today of our 66 books, the early church fathers quoted them as divinely authoritative.

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I'm not familiar enough with the early church fathers' writings to know, to be able to say categorically they never quoted from the

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Apocrypha. It seems to me that they would have quoted from other books that are not in our canon in our New Testament or Old Testament.

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But the question would be, did they quote them as regarding them as inspired documents? Just like, is it

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Jude who quotes Enoch? He doesn't quote it as if it's scripture but he makes reference to that. Paul quotes Athenian philosophers and Stoic and Epicurean philosophers.

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The fact that New Testament authors quoted other people does not mean that they regarded them as inspired.

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So the question would be, did the early church fathers quote anybody outside of our scriptures as if they did regard them as inspired?

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And I don't think that they did but I can't categorically answer that question affirmatively, no. That's a good question.

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Yeah, Peter. Are you gonna cover that?

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Yeah, we'll cover that. Yeah, we're gonna deal with that in time because that's the question.

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We're laying the foundation now with the preservation, the issue of inspiration and preservation. All right, any other questions before we move on?

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Okay. Number six, other evidences of divine inspiration for the Old and the New Testaments. And here we have to acknowledge that what we're dealing with in this section is somewhat subjective because we're asking the question, does scripture, what we're regarding as scripture, does it possess the qualities and the character of something that would come from God?

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Does it possess the quality and characteristics of something that would come from God? Now admittedly, this is somewhat of a subjective assessment, is it not?

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Because Muslims would look at the Quran and say, yeah, it possesses the quality and character of something that would come from God.

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Mormons would look at the Book of Mormon and say, yes, it does possess the quality and character of something that would come from God. So as Christians, we're asking concerning our 66 books, does it possess the quality and characteristics of something that comes from God?

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So this is somewhat of a subjective assessment. The unbeliever does not sense this, and we have to say this up front.

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By the way, just because it's a subjective assessment that we're making does not prove it to be false. Just because I'm experiencing it and I'm testifying that yes,

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I am experiencing or assessing this to be true does not in itself, just because it's my own personal assessment, it's not objective, it's subjective, that doesn't necessarily prove it to be false.

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If I dip my hand in the water and I say it's hot, just because that's how I feel it or experience it doesn't itself prove that the water is not hot.

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It doesn't prove that I'm wrong just because that's my subjective assessment. But there is a subjective element to this, and we have to be aware of this.

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We also have to be aware that an unbeliever does not sense this or experience these evidences. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 2.

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The natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit of God. So to ask an unbeliever to assess scripture, whether he views it as the

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Word of God or sees it as the Word of God or feels its power or anything like that, you might as well yell fire to a corpse.

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It's not gonna get up, it's not gonna flinch, it's not gonna understand it, it's not even gonna understand what fire is because a corpse does not have the ability to respond to that kind of stimuli.

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The same thing spiritually speaking with an unbeliever. An unbeliever who is not rightly related to God, whose heart's never been changed, their eyes have never been opened, their mind has never been enlightened, they're still broken and unable to assess spiritual things, they cannot understand or apprehend spiritual things.

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So when you talk about scripture, you're talking to a spiritually dead person about a living book and they can't assess that.

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So this is something, these evidences here are things that can only be assessed or appreciated and apprehended by spiritual people, people who know

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God and have been regenerated. Yes, that's right, except for the gospel.

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Yeah, but even the gospel itself needs to be revealed and understand by divine revelation. The Lord has to do that work because an unbeliever can hear the gospel and still respond like a corpse would to the charge of fire or whatever.

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He has to, the unbeliever has to have that regenerating work done by the Holy Spirit in their heart before they can assess or understand that.

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So through the gospel, that's right.

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Right, through the gospel, yep. And that is what causes, the gospel causes the unbeliever to be born again to a living hope and in that they have then a spiritual capacity to understand spiritual things.

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So we're talking about things here that are not necessarily the gospel itself, but these are spiritual apprehensions of spiritual truths, something that only believers can have or appreciate.

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Okay, any other questions or comments? A little bit of introduction there. All right, number one, it is the evidence of self -vindicating authority.

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This is under internal evidence. Letter A under number six, it is the evidence of a self -vindicating authority.

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The Bible does speak with its own convincing authority and it does not need to be defended. It's kind of like a lion, you let it out of its cage and it'll do its work.

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The Bible speaks for itself, it defends itself, it just needs to be taught and explained. There is a certain self -vindicating authority that scripture has.

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You quote scripture and unbelievers are not going to sense or realize that self -vindicating authority. The unbeliever's gonna say, well,

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I don't agree with that, that's just you quoting your book. Well, it might be me quoting my book, but it is a sword and it has its own self -vindicating authority.

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We don't need to defend that as such. We're not making the case that the Bible's authoritative. It has its own self -vindicating authority.

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When scripture speaks, we recognize that it has its own authority. Number two, it has the evidence of the testimony of the

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Holy Spirit, the evidence of the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit demonstrates that the

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Bible is the word of God to the child of God and it has always been the consensus of the Christian church that scripture is

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God's word, that the Bible is the word of God. And I can tell you this one, before I got saved, I doubted whether scripture was true or accurate or had been preserved or whether it was right or whether it was man's word or God's word.

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I doubted all of that. The moment I got saved, all of that doubt went right out the window. Because as a regenerated believer in Jesus Christ, I didn't need a seminary course to tell me that scripture was true.

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I understood it was true. That's the mark of a regenerate heart. That's the evidence of a regenerate heart. An individual who questions and criticizes and critiques scripture and does not accept its authority and does not accept that it is the word of God is somebody who, is that you?

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Okay. Sorry. Is somebody whose salvation you have every right to question?

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Because the believer in Jesus Christ will embrace and will accept that authority and he has the testimony of the

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Holy Spirit that the scripture is true. Okay, number three. The evidence from the transforming ability of the

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Bible. The Bible claims to be a source and a means of regeneration and sanctification. We have the evidence of the transforming nature of the word of God.

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People's lives have been changed simply because, I'm wondering if this is the battery. Could it be the battery?

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I won't touch it from here on out. All right. Okay, so there's the evidence of the

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Holy Spirit. There's the evidence from the transforming ability of scripture. The preaching of the word of God transforms people's lives.

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That is absolutely a fact. And we see that transformation happen when we see people who are under the regular preaching of the word of God, regular study and reading of the word of God, how their lives are transformed and changed, how they change over time.

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Scripture has a sanctifying, regenerating effect to it. It transforms people's lives. Just the preaching of the word does that.

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Not only that, but sometimes just the proclamation of truth and the proclamation of the word of God has a way of causing regeneration and causing sanctification in the lives of people.

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Look, I could get up and preach for 25 years through Moby Dick. And nobody's life is gonna be changed by that.

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Everybody's gonna be the same walking in at the beginning of that 25 years as walking out at the end of that 25 years. Nobody will be changed.

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Nothing will change in anybody's lives. But Scripture, one sermon, has the power to change lives forever. I have to speak in a hand held.

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Unbelievers can understand certain things about Scripture. But Paul says that the spiritual elements of Scripture, that life -changing capacity that Scripture has, the life -changing power, is only something that is assessed by believers.

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Unbelievers can read Scripture and they can understand, yeah, I understand that God loved the world and so he sent his son to die for the world, et cetera.

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I read tons of, I read and memorized tons of Scripture before I was ever saved. Understanding parts of it, but not really understanding anything of its depth or its significance.

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The life -changing element of Scripture was completely absent in my heart before I was regenerated. That make sense?

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I can read chronicles and read through the genealogy and understand this person begat so and so, et cetera. I can read the history and say, yeah, this is the story of the history of the flood or David and Goliath or et cetera.

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I can understand the details as it exists there, but I cannot understand the spiritual significance nor the work of the

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Holy Spirit in what he intends to do through those passages unless I am a believer. The spiritual work of the

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Word of God is only upon the believer. How does a unbeliever seeing a 700 -year -old man, say it again?

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How can an unsaved individual accept the lifespan of those men in Genesis you're talking about? That's something that can, you accept it if you believe

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Scripture is the Word of God and you embrace that. An unbeliever can believe certain things in Scripture are true, that they actually happened.

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For instance, an unbeliever could read the book of Acts and say, yeah, I believe that there was a man named Paul. He believed he saw vision. He ended up preaching and founding a bunch of churches.

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And they can accept the reality of all of those things. They may even say, I believe there was a nation of Israel and there was a prophet named

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Nehemiah who rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem and the history is there. I believe that these things are actually true.

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They can accept that Scripture even says certain things are true, but the regenerating, sanctifying spiritual work of the

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Word of God is absent in the heart of that believer. It's not that an unbeliever will reject every last thing that Scripture says.

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They won't necessarily do that, but they are cut off from the life -giving effect of the Word of God until the

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Spirit of God does a work in that heart that changes the heart and mind so that they embrace Scripture as the Word of God and receive its regenerating and sanctifying effect.

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Does that make sense? Better? Yeah, Jen, yeah.

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Yeah, there's a divine, supernatural, spiritual work here of regeneration that we believe that God does in His sovereignty upon the work of an unbeliever that brings them from death to life so that they can understand spiritual things.

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Yeah, Garrett. Oh yeah, that's true.

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Yeah, that's a good observation. Number three should have the caveat that we're talking about only a believer. The evidence from the transforming ability of the

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Bible in the life of a believer, but it is Scripture itself and the preaching of the Word which also regenerates the unbeliever.

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So it has the power to regenerate and change the heart of an unbeliever as well. So I guess that wouldn't be a strict caveat there because it is

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Scripture, it is the preaching of the Word. We have been caused to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and it is the

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Word of God that does that work of regenerating the heart. So it has a transforming ability.

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Yeah, but I mean it's not one to the exclusion of the other. Yeah, you can't have one, you can't have a regenerating work without the power of the

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Holy Spirit. So the Spirit of God is involved in that, but not in a way that is apart from Scripture and neither does Scripture do it apart from the work of the

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Holy Spirit. Dead Jess, did you have something to add to that? Okay.

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All right, number four is the evidence of the unity of the Bible. So remember, we're asking the question, does Scripture give the character to have to possess the character and qualities of something that we would expect if it did come from God?

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There's the evidence of the unity of the Bible and that's number four. We have 66 books that are written over 1 ,500 years by 40 separate authors from every walk of life who spoke three separate languages and yet the

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Bible speaks with one voice on all of the essential issues regarding life and godliness, one voice.

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40 separate authors separated by 1 ,500 years. Many of these authors did not know each other.

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Jonah did not know John or Joel. These authors didn't know each other. Some of them didn't even live near each other in terms of time over 1 ,500 years.

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Some of them didn't even speak the same languages as one another. Some of them spoke Aramaic, some of them spoke Hebrew, some of them spoke all three,

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Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, but the Bible's written in three separate languages by over 40 authors over a period of 1 ,500 years from men who were kings to shepherds to fishermen to plowboys, peasants, and everything in between, kings and peasants, and yet it speaks with one voice authoritatively in total agreement on every subject that it addresses without any conflict or contradiction.

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I defy you to get 10 people to sit at your kitchen table and agree on everything. Could you do that?

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I doubt it, but yet you have this univocal voice in Scripture, one voice, where it speaks in Scripture on everything.

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It doesn't contradict itself, and they don't contradict each other. They speak in harmony on hundreds of different topics, political topics, religious topics, spiritual topics, topics regarding this earth, topics regarding heaven, the afterlife,

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God, his nature, the nature of the Spirit of God, the nature of eternal life, the nature of heaven and hell, divine punishment, works, salvation.

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All of those subjects, they speak with one voice on it, and that is something that can only be the product of divine inspiration.

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So letter B, now let's look at the external evidences. We have evidences from outside the biblical text. Evidences from outside the biblical text.

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So this would be number one, the evidence from the historicity of the Bible. Historicity, historicity,

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H -O -R -I, no, H -I -S -T -O -R -I -C -T -Y, historicity of the

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Bible. What we mean by that is that it speaks on historical subjects, peoples, places, events, kings, kingdoms, rulers, nations, dates, and all of these things can be subject to verification.

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We can test these things that Scripture does reveal are true about history, and yet no archeological find has ever invalidated a biblical statement.

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There was a day when critics of the New Testament and the Old Testament, Bible critics, used to say that David, King David, never existed because there was no evidence of his kingdom until about the 1950s sometime when they discovered

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David's palace on the south end of the city of Jerusalem, and I've walked through David's kingly chambers where they have discovered things that are recorded in Scripture that are mentioned that are now in the ruins discovered on the south end of the city of Jerusalem in the city of David.

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I've walked through David's palace. 50 years ago, they said David never existed, and they said this about the

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Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Acts. Even secular historians will say that it's some of the finest historical work that has ever been written.

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They may disagree with the miracles. They may disagree and reject certain spiritual statements and spiritual teachings in those books, but secular historians will admit that the

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Book of Acts and the Book of Luke are fine history because Luke is a historian with the utmost integrity and precision, and you see this in regards to all of the

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Old Testament books and claims of things that it covers in history. The kingdoms, the rise and fall of kingdoms, the events that it unfolds, there's some of it that we can't test.

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There are things that we have not discovered evidence of, for instance, but there are a bunch of other things where we have discovered evidence, and no discovery that we have made overturns a statement by a biblical author concerning a historical event or a timing or a person.

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So the historicity of the Bible. Number, yeah, they actually support it.

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Yeah, it's not just that we're saying, well, it doesn't say anything. It doesn't say anything. I mean, these discoveries that we have reinforce what

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Scripture says concerning the events that happen and the way that they unfolded. Number two, the evidence from the testimony of Christ, and this is a powerful one.

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Jesus regarded his words as divinely authoritative. The words of the Old Testament is divinely authoritative, and he promised to give his authority and his words to those who were his apostles.

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So we have the testimony of Christ. That's an external evidence. Number three, the evidence from fulfilled prophecy.

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There are hundreds of prophecies, some given hundreds of years in advance of an event being fulfilled, and no prophecy that should have been fulfilled by today has remained unfulfilled.

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So the evidence of fulfilled prophecy. I think it is, is it

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Jeremiah or Isaiah? One of those two prophets names the Persian ruler who would order the reconstruction of the city of Jerusalem, names him by name,

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Cyrus, hundreds of years before Cyrus was ever born. You have

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Isaiah describing crucifixion in Isaiah 53, 700 years before Jesus was crucified, several centuries before crucifixion was even invented as a method of execution, and yet Isaiah described it in terms that you would expect somebody living 700 years before it happened to describe it.

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You have the same thing happened in Psalm 22, prophecies about the crucifixion and the death of Jesus that were fulfilled exactly as the psalmist describes them.

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You have prophecies about the rise and fall of kingdoms, prophecy about the destruction of Edom, prophecy about the destruction of the sons of Esau, Tyre and Sidon being wiped out, the city of Tyre being a place where they would cast nets and it would be completely destroyed, and yet fishermen would cast their nets there.

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You can go there today and it hasn't been rebuilt. City of Babylon has never been rebuilt. All these prophecies that God gave concerning events and people and places and nations, they've been fulfilled just as Scripture said they would be fulfilled.

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So the evidence from fulfilled prophecy. Number three, number four, the evidence from the influence of the

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Bible. This is an external evidence, evidence from the influence of the Bible. No book has been more widely circulated, had more broad influence, been translated into more languages, printed in more copies, inspired more songs, art and discussion, motivated more good work, scientific discoveries and geological discoveries, or stirred more love and devotion than Scripture has.

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It is the single widest circulated, most printed, most quoted, most referenced book in all of human history.

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There is no close second to this. Scripture stands alone in that way, and it is the most influential book that has ever been written.

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That is certainly something that we would expect if it came from God, correct? It has the quality and character of something that would be divine.

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Number five, the evidence from the apparent indestructibility of the Bible. The apparent indestructibility of the

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Bible. You know that the Bible has, people have tried to destroy this book, right? There's persecutions.

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The Romans launched a number of government -sponsored persecutions, and at the end of the first century, all the way in for about 250 years, the church was persecuted, and the sole intent of the

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Roman Empire and every Roman emperor that started a persecution was to destroy every copy of Scripture and to wipe out all vestiges of the

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Christian faith. The emperor Diocletian, by royal edict in 303 AD, demanded that every copy of the

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Bible be destroyed by fire. He killed so many Christians and destroyed so many copies of the Scriptures that when they went underground and were silent, he thought he had succeeded in destroying the

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Christian religion. He caused a medal to be struck with the inscription, quote, the Christian religion is destroyed and the worship of the gods restored, close quote.

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That was in 303 AD. And yet here we are, right? You and I talking about this book, and where's

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Diocletian? Voltaire, the French infidel, predicted the

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Christian, this is one of my favorite stories. Voltaire, the French infidel, predicted that Christianity would be destroyed within 100 years of his death in 1778, and that the only place you would find a

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Bible would be in a museum. Within 50 years of Voltaire's death in 1778, the

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Geneva Bible Society bought his home and used his own home as a printing press to print Bibles. Isn't that magnificent?

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This book is virtually indestructible. And number six, there's the evidence from the integrity of the human authors.

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From everything we know about everyone who wrote Scripture, these men were honest, devout, sincere, trustworthy, reliable men who died for what they wrote.

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At least the New Testament authors did. From everything we know, we know that we cannot prove any motive on their part to deceive or to distort or to fabricate.

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There is no evidence that they corroborated in order to produce any kind of a sham. So does it possess the qualities and characters of something that would come from God, Scripture?

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I think these are all valid evidences that we have to look at to say it does bear the marks of a divine book. Let me give you a syllogism and see if,

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I'm gonna give you the syllogism and then you tell me if you can recognize where this syllogism comes from, okay? By syllogism,

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I just mean an argument or sort of a logical step -by -step thought process.

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See if you can tell me where this comes from. The Bible must be the invention, it must be the invention of either good men or angels, good men or good angels, okay?

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That's one option. Bad men or devils or God. Those are the three options.

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It has to be an invention of good men and angels or bad men or angels or God. Those are the three options.

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Now, it cannot be the invention of good men or angels because they would not make a book that claimed to be from God if it wasn't because good people wouldn't do that, would they?

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So they were inventing something, it can't be good men who wrote the Bible and good angels who wrote the

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Bible if they're intending to deceive people that wouldn't make them good at all. So good people wouldn't do that. It can't be the invention of bad men or devils for they would not make a book which commands all duty, forbids all sin and condemns their souls to hell for all of eternity.

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So it couldn't have been written by bad men. So if it's not written by good men or angels because if it's not from God, then good men or angels could not have written something that claims to be from God but isn't, then they wouldn't be good.

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It can't be from bad men or devils because they would never write something that condemns their own souls to hell and forbids all sin.

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So the only other option is that it must be from God. Do you follow that? Does anybody know where that syllogism comes from?

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Nobody? I'm surprised. There was a couple teenagers who got this. C .S. Lewis, yes. It's the liar, lunatic,

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Lord syllogism. You remember that? Where he says that if Jesus claimed to be

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God but he wasn't, then he was either a liar or a lunatic. If he knew that he wasn't

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God and he was claiming to be, then he was a liar. If he thought he was God but he was not, then he was a lunatic.

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And the only other option is he must be Lord. It's the same kind of syllogism. In Screwtape Letters, The Lion, the

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Witch, and the Wardrobe, there is a scene in there where one of the characters, Professor Diggory, takes the syllogism through with one of the characters in The Lion, the

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Witch, and the Wardrobe, where, it's been so long since I read this to my kids, but two of the kids are like, who's the one that went through the wardrobe?

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It's Edmund. Where two of the Pavensi kids are talking with Professor Diggory and they say

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Edmund claims to have gone into the wardrobe and it's snowing in there and there's a whole world inside the wardrobe that nobody's ever seen before and yet he experienced all this and came out and told us all about it.

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And they're talking to Diggory about this and of course Diggory says, well, have you ever known Edmund to be a liar? And they said, no, he's like the most honest kid amongst all of us.

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Have you ever known him to be a lunatic or crazy? No, he's not really characterized by that. So if he's not a liar and he's not a lunatic, then what is he?

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Must be telling the truth about the wardrobe. So, Lewis kind of uses that syllogism to make a point in his books and really to prepare us to think seriously and similarly regarding the

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Lord Jesus Christ and so I'm offering you that syllogism. Either scripture comes from good men or bad men or God.

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If it does not come from God, it cannot come from good men because good men would never claim that it came from God. If it didn't, bad men would never write a book that condemned themselves to hell and forbid all sin.

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So therefore, it must come from God. All right, so here's our conclusion. The Bible claims to be the word.

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It has the characteristics of a book that is the written word of God. It has the influence of a book that would be from God. There is a logical, philosophical, rational, biblical, historical and theological reasons for believing that the

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Bible is the word of God and claims to be or is exactly what it claims to be, that is divinely inspired and so we believe that it is so.

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Based upon evidence, yes, but it is still a volitional act of faith whereby we accept what

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God says about himself and about his word on the basis of faith because as a people of God, we look at scripture and we believe that it is the word of God because that is what

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God has said that it is. You say, well, that sounds like circular reasoning. It's not circular reasoning. There's an element in which we embrace what

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God says because God says it and scripture says that but when I step back and I examine this book to say, does it bear the evidence of something that would come from God?

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I have every rational, logical, theological, historical reason to believe that this book is exactly what it claims to be.

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So that is what the Bible says concerning itself and the doctrine of inspiration. Are there any questions or comments? Yes, hold on,

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Emily. C .S.

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Lewis mentioned, he walks through that in one of the chapters of Mere Christianity. He walks through that and then also it's presented in the allegory of the

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Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I'm not sure if he walked through it in a recording or talked about it but he did mention it in Mere Christianity.

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That's kind of where he develops it at great length. Yep, Brian was next. No, I didn't say that.

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I didn't say the Bible is subjected. I'd say there's a sense in which our assessment of scripture is subjective.

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When we ask, does this book carry the characteristics, the marks and characteristics of a book that would come from God?

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There is a subjective element in that because it is my assessment. It is something that we experience when we read scripture.

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It's self -indicating authority. It's claimed to be the word of God. It's spiritual transforming ability.

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There is a subjective response or impression that we get in reading scripture. Yeah, I'm not saying scripture is subjective.

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I'm saying that there is a sense in which our assessment of it is subjective. But listen, there's a sense in which the atheist or the critic's assessment of scripture is subjective as well because the atheist or the critic has to read scripture and say, well,

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I don't get that. I don't feel that. I don't assess that that way. Yeah, Cornell. Yeah, correct, it's a good observation.

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Yeah, Nathel. Yeah, so the question is we have testimony from outside of scripture, like in Josephus, where he makes reference to certain things about Christians, Christianity, and Jesus of Nazareth.

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Would an unbeliever be able to take Josephus and compare it to scripture and say, therefore, what scripture says is true? That would depend in part upon an unbeliever because every unbeliever would probably approach that a little bit differently.

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Josephus's mentions of Jesus are not as thorough and documented as the New Testament is, obviously.

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Josephus basically affirms there was a man named Jesus of Nazareth. He went about doing good and had followers and disciples.

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He claimed to be God, and there is talk of him being resurrected from the dead. That's as far as I think

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Josephus's testimony concerning Jesus of Nazareth goes. So if an unbeliever is inclined to doubt or disagree with scripture, they're probably gonna doubt or disagree with any external evidence to scripture that would point to the historicity of scripture.

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They would say, if I were an unbeliever and you presented Josephus to me, I'd say, well, obviously, that's a man living shortly after the events of the

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New Testament who himself just assesses this from what he heard. He's just talking about what other people were talking about at the time, which doesn't prove your case.

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It just proves that people were talking about the things that you talk about today. It doesn't prove that they actually happened. That's how I think an unbeliever could overturn that.

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Any other questions? Yes, Jenny. Is there anything wrong with pointing to other evidences outside of scripture for testimony that things in scripture could be possible or true?

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That would depend on how you cite the external evidences, because if somebody says, well, there's scientific evidence that the children of Israel crossed over the

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Red Sea because at the time, it wasn't really the Red Sea. It was just the Reed Sea, so the water was up to about their knees, and they got all the way across for that reason.

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And so therefore, I believe that it happened for that reason. See, then you're overturning the teaching of scripture and the authenticity of the miracle.

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But if you say, for instance, like Jason Lyle did in our conference that he had, there are all kinds of scientific evidences that demonstrate that what we read in scripture is true.

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Science properly understood and used points to the legitimacy of scripture, points to the legitimacy of the things that we read there.

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That is a completely valid use of science insofar as it goes. We believe, for instance, that there was a worldwide flood, and so if there were a worldwide flood, what would

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I expect? I would expect to look around the world and see billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.

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And so when I look around the earth, what do I see? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.

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So that scientific observation of what we see in the fossils and how fossils are formed is evidence that what scripture says is true.

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So we can look at science and history and archeology and use them, but ultimately our authority is scripture itself.

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If I come across something that says, and the danger of citing science to prove scripture as if science is the authority is that the very same science that you quote to prove scripture that the flood happened can also be turned against us to prove that dead men don't come back from the dead.

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And so then you've handed a card to the atheist and the unbeliever that basically says, look, science is our authority and it proves scripture.

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Well, science also says dead men don't come back to life again. So what does that say about the resurrection? And ultimately, when science confirms scripture, science confirms scripture.

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But when science contradicts scripture, scripture is true. And not science, properly used and properly understood.

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I'm not talking about evolutionary science or garbage science. I'm talking about real, genuine, observable truth.

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Okay, good question, Cornell? Right, that's true.

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That's a bigger miracle than the parting of the Red Sea, the Egyptian army drowning in knee -deep water. Yeah, Kim?

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Yeah, in that case, when we're quoting that or using that, you're talking about things that are in the historical, grammatical, or cultural context, which illuminate what happened in scripture, things that the first century audience would have understood, yeah.

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Okay, any other questions? All right, we are done with our time.

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I'm gonna turn it off so that we can try and fix the mic before the worship service. What we've got coming up next in the session, or next week, is look at the doctrines of inerrancy and preservation, and what we mean by that.

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If we can get through that in one week, we will, but if not, then we'll just kinda take it a little bit slower. This is going, we're doing this about half the speed we did it the first time we went through it 10 years ago, and that's not by design.

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That's just because you guys are such a good audience. We'll leave it at that. It's not my fault, it's your fault.

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Hopefully, that'll be one week, and we might do, we might do two weeks on that, and then we're gonna take a break, so let's bow in prayer.

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Father, we do thank you for your word. We thank you we can trust it, because you say it, it is true, you preserve your word.

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It is without error, it cannot err, and we just thank you that you use it in our hearts and in our lives to glorify yourself, to sanctify us, to regenerate us, to make us your own, and then to keep us and preserve us.

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That is all the work of your word, and we thank you for it, and we thank you for the men and the women who have worked and suffered, and many who have given their lives so that we may have your word in our own language and have it so prolifically around us.

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We pray that you'd make us good stewards of it and encourage our hearts together today with the fact that your word is the truth, your word is authoritative and divine, and we can trust it.