Answers In Genesis - Sunday School - Week 4

We are going to. do a little bit of review and then we've got a special speaker. what, I forgot to grab the clicker. I, I'm not sure what I did with that thing I'm a barber.

Thank you so much. we're gonna do a little bit of review and then, we've got a student speaker that's gonna come up for about 10 minutes. And answer the question, how do we know that the Bible is written by God and man or something along those lines? Is, is the Bible written by just man or is it also written by God?

Thank you, Matthew. but let's go ahead and pray. And And we'll jump into our lesson. Lord, we thank you so much for this, beautiful morning, for us to gather together, study your word.

We thank you for the fact that we can trust in your word, that it guides us, and as we look this morning, we thank you that you have providentially preserved your word. We ask that you help us to understand these truths, apply them to our lives and hold them in humility as we engage both Christians and unbelievers, and, as we, just engage them with the truths of your word. We ask that you would, just be with us, fill us with your spirit. And we pray this in the name of Jesus.

Amen. Let me just do, just remind all of you what we're doing here. I've got a couple of quick announcements. the question that we'll be hitting a little bit later in the review time is, is it reasonable for God to swear by Himself?

The short answer is, Yes, if you're here last week, yes, it is reasonable. a conference I do want to mention to you, one of our sister churches out in the Yucaipa area. Pastor Todd, they're doing a conference, 2nd annual creation symposium, and they have some excellent, professors there that attend their church. And, so it's at Anchor Bible in Redlands.

There's a little schedule here, you can go online and check out their stuff. So it's Anchor Bible Church of Redlands. Matthew Ingle and Todd Wood are our speakers, biologists, both of them. and then some additional speakers.

It's $10 a person or $25 a family. And so that's October, I think 9th to 11th. Really, really, it should be a really great time. So if you wanna sign up for that, we'd encourage, encourage that.

this is our adult equipping school, which the purpose is, the, is to train our families how to know, live, and speak God's word for His glory. We want it not just to be head knowledge, but you gotta have head knowledge to, to really work out in your life, and we really are encouraging you to speak the word of God, not just to feel good that more and that your life is better. but that we have a concern for our friends and neighbors who just flat out don't know the truth a lot of times, right?

I was at a conference recently in Indonesia.

I'll talk more about that later. The Speaker, Mike Shipman. One of the things he just really encouraged, everybody there with is when you get the opportunity to share the gospel or talk to someone about the gospel, share it with them like it's their lucky day, right? And there are people that go in the United States, there are people that go throughout their lives and nobody shares the gospel with them.

I talked to Aurelio Breto, one of our members, he was in his 30s. He knew many Christians, and he was in his mid-thirties before somebody shared the gospel with him. And at first he was just absolutely overjoyed, but then after he started to think about it, he started getting angry. And he went to some of his Christian friends and he said, why did you not share the gospel with me?

And they were just like, well, we didn't think you'd be open or we were going to, but we just never got around to it. We wanna speak with the idea that it's their lucky day, right? If somebody gets to come into contact with you, who actually knows the gospel and knows the truth. so that's part of our purpose here.

We're going through a particular course, we can trust the Bible. Today's lesson, God preserves his word. And Let's just do a little bit of review. We asked, is it reasonable to swear by God to swear by Himself?

We said yes. The reason is, what's the reason why it's reasonable for God to swear by Himself? There is nobody higher than God, right? It's not reasonable for us to swear by ourselves because we are just creatures, but God is the creator.

And so if he were to swear by somebody other than himself, then he would be, there'd be somebody greater than God, right? So God does not need to appeal to anyone higher than Himself. what do we mean then by the authority of the Bible, or that the Bible is authoritative? This is what we mean, definition from Gruden.

The authority of Scripture means that all the words in Scripture are God's words in such a way that to disbelieve or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God. So if, if God is the highest authority, he can't swear by anything higher than himself. And he has truly revealed himself to us in the Bible, there is no higher authority than the Bible on the earth for us. And so we can go to the Bible confidently, believe it.

And obey it. If we don't obey the Bible, either on purpose or just with lack of knowledge, we are disregarding God Himself, His word. His word has authority because it comes from Him. let me just review a couple of things from last week.

So we, we, we, the big part of our message was the fact that we can support the Bible with the Bible because it is the highest form of authority and that all arguments for starting points or final authority are of necessity circular, right? Anybody who's dealing with the first starting point has to make a circular argument. If they want rationalism to be the starting point, the only way they can prove that is to appeal to rationalism. Right?

so there's presuppositions that people make all the time, even if they don't realize it. If somebody wants to start with logic, the only way to prove that logic is the best starting point is to say it's logical. The only way to prove that empiricism is the best starting point is to say, I've never seen any better starting point. So you have to ultimately appeal to that starting point to, otherwise, you've, it's self-defeating.

Right? If you appeal to something higher to prove your highest authority, it's a self-defeating argument. And so, it's reasonable and rational to appeal to the Bible to demonstrate the Bible's authority. And so if somebody tries to tell you that's a circular argument, just ask them, well, what is your starting point?

What is your final source of authority or your first source of authority, and you can show them that all starting points are of necessity circular. That being said, then how does one choose among the various starting points or places of absolute authority? Cause there's lots of people that have different starting points, right? We all presume a starting point.

So how do we choose? Somebody says there is no final authority. Somebody else says it's rationalism, somebody else says it's logic. So how do we know which competing And we go to the Bible to answer that question.

And so we would argue this, the truthfulness of the Bible should commend itself as being more persuasive than any other religious books, or than any other intellectual constructions of the mind. It comports best with the actual experience of life. So if everybody was thinking properly, let's assume no fall. Let's assume that the human mind has not been fallen.

It has not been affected by what we call the noetic effects of sin, that is the post-fall effects of sin on thinking. Then the truthfulness of the Bible would It would prove itself to people. however, because of sin, man's perception and analysis of God and His creation is warped. Everybody has the wrong glasses on since the fall.

It's like John Calvin says, we have glasses or our eyesight is blurry. We look out at the world and it's blurry. And we give wrong interpretations. We can make various guesses because we're still made in the image of God.

We look out at the world, we're like, yeah, that's a cow and that's the, that's a star and that's the sun. But then we give the wrong import to those facts. We have the wrong glasses, we have blurred vision because of sin. The truthfulness of the Bible should commend itself as being far more persuasive than other religious books or than other intellectual constructions of the mind.

It comports best with reality. However, we would say, as Gruden says, thus in a free, world free from sin, the Bible would commit itself convincingly to all people as God's word. But because sin distorts people's perception of reality, they do not recognize scripture for what it really is. Therefore, it requires the work of the Holy Spirit.

This is the bottom line, overcoming the effects of sin to enable us to persuade, to be persuaded that the Bible is indeed the word of God and that the claims it makes for itself are true. Does that make sense? The Bible is the highest authority. If God really exists, he's the highest authority in the universe.

God has created us. He does exist. He's created us in His image with the capacity to know and understand language, and that he has communicated to us through language. however, since the fall, people misinterpret reality.

And so while the evidence should be clear to everyone, if it weren't for sin, because of sin, people misinterpret the evidence and as Romans says, they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. When Romans says that people suppress the truth and unrighteousness, it's not saying some people do that. That is a, a blanket statement of humanity. That humanity by nature suppresses the truth and unrighteousness.

And so you can give them evidence, right? I can tell them that there are fossils on the highest mountains and say, therefore, that proves a worldwide flood. What do they say? No, that actually proves evolution because those mountains millions of years ago used to be down in valleys and covered by water and so fossils on mountains prove nothing but gradualism.

They take the evidence I'm giving them that should demonstrate a worldwide flood based on their presuppositions. They reinterpret it and they come to a completely different conclusion. So presuppositions has everything to do with how we interpret evidence and facts. And because the Bible tells us that we have the wrong glasses on and our, and our vision is blurred by sin, it is not mere facts that's gonna convince anybody of the truth.

The Holy Spirit has to enter in. And do a work, right? 1 Corinthians 2, I won't have you turn there. Many of you probably know it.

The natural man, what does he understand the things of the spirit? He does not understand them, nor can he know them. The, in fact, let's go ahead and open there real quick. And we are gonna get Samuel up here soon, I promise.

That's right, it's spiritually discerned. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 2, just to remind ourselves, this is, again, back to last week. This is part of our biblical epistemology, our theory of knowledge. let's see.

OK, verse 14. The natural man, that is the unbeliever, does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they're spiritually discerned, nor can he know them. The unbeliever cannot understand spiritual things. They're foolishness.

Brian used to say to me all the time, you haven't said to me in a while, but we used to have this conversation every single week. He would say, Mike, I witness to people every day, and everyday people reject God. Why won't they believe? He's given spiritual things to natural men and women who cannot know, cannot know spiritual things.

So it requires the spirit to enter in and to do an awakening work to impart knowledge to people. Is this making sense? Because of the fall, people cannot see the truth. In fact, they suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

The Bible also tells us they've been taken captive by the devil to do whose will? His will. And so we teach the truth of the Bible. in humility and gentleness, awaiting for the Lord to grant them repentance, right?

And we don't say, oh, you must be so stupid. I'm so smart and you're stupid. Why won't you believe the gospel? That's not, the Bible tells us epistemologically, that's not what's happening.

It's not they're stupid and I'm smart. It's the Holy Spirit has awakened this sinner, this, this person who was bound by the devil to do his will. I was dark and just like anybody else. I could not understand the things of the Spirit of God.

I was a natural man. I suppressed the truth and unrighteousness. I thought I was free, but I was actually taken captive by the devil to do his will. And then, my live-in babysitter began to share the gospel with me and over many years, the Holy Spirit began to open up my eyes.

And then one day I embraced Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, not because of me and at my smarts, but because of the grace of Almighty God. And then I began to study the Bible and it was making sense to me. I was like, wow, these things that did make sense to me and I rejected and I thought were foolish, now are making sense and I love them. I can remember as a 14 year old jumping up and down on my bed cause I was so excited about a Bible verse.

What 14 year old jumps on their bed because they're excited about the Bible? No normal 14 year old. That's somebody that the Holy Spirit has been doing some work in their heart. Now they, they love the Bible, right?

I didn't grow up in a Christian home. Nobody's telling me, you gotta read your Bible. I'm just in my room by myself, reading my Bible, having just enjoying it, right? That's a work of the Holy Spirit.

So how do we know that the Bible is from God and therefore worthy to be trusted as our guide? Well, first we start with the internal evidence that we've been talking about. The Bible is the word of God because it says it is, and it allows us to make sense of the world. No other system of thought provides a consistent rational explanation for our world.

So we start with the authority of the Word of God that is not irrational for God to swear by Himself. And so we go to the Bible and the Bible proves itself to be the Bible. And it makes the most sense of the world as we have the right glasses on. As we look out into the world, we see that the Bible's rational, right?

That doesn't mean your natural friend is gonna think it's rational. You can give them all the rational arguments. A lot of times they're gonna say you're, that's foolish. But we've got the right glasses on to the Holy Spirit.

We see it's rational. OK? What does the Bible say about itself, the Old Testament? Says thus says the Lord, or something similar over 2000 times.

The New Testament scriptures claim to be the words of God. If the Bible never claimed to be the Word of God, we could say, well, we don't really know, but the Bible claims everywhere, both in Old and New Testament to be the Word of God. We can, can, what can we expect from a book that comes from God, the God who cannot lie? If the Bible claims to be the word of God and God cannot lie, what would you expect of such a book?

You would expect a book full of truth, not lies, right? If indeed the Bible is the word of God. we also have what, John Calvin in the Westminster Confession of Faith says are, many sufficient, proofs externally. It doesn't use the word externally, but there are many sufficient proofs of the Bible.

When the mess, I'd really encourage you guys to take a look at the Westminster Confession of Faith. I should have put out one of the slides. The Westminster Confession of faith is just an absolutely amazing document in all of Western culture. So, even if somebody wasn't even a believer, I would tell them, read the Westminster Confession of Faith to understand Western culture.

For Christians, I would say you're looking at a document that some of the best Christian minds in all of history spent a lot of time on and even though we may not agree with every, Dot and Tittle. It's an amazing document. One of the things that I, that I would really encourage you to take a look at this week is the section on scripture where it talks about what we've just talked about, how that it's the testimony of the Holy Spirit that makes our understanding of the Bible sure and certain.

That's the only way that you come to 100% certainty.

Nevertheless, while external proofs cannot bring us to certainty, there are many sufficient proofs. That would bring people to acknowledge that the Bible is the word of God if they have the right glasses on. I'm paraphrasing, they're not using the word glasses and so on. Yeah, Mitch.

Sure. God Yeah, Yeah, the Yeah, that's great. Yeah, well, I think more I, I'd have to go read the context there, but Mitch is talking about in Job how Job is saying, ask the beasts and they will tell you what I teach you. Job can be a little bit tricky because you need to first of all, first of all, figure out, does it come from the enemies or does it come from Job?

Is God speaking it? And so it's, we have to be careful about dropping right in the middle of Job and pulling something out of the enemy's speech and using it, what? So, but that, that actually comports with what the first part of Psalm 19 says. That we can look at all of creation and creation is designed to tell us something about God, so that people are without excuse, as it says in Romans one.

There's enough information in nature that makes men and men and women culpable. The problem is, is Romans one, the rest of that passage tells us what people always do with that information, and that is what? They suppress it in unrighteousness. Even though there's enough information to convince everybody that there really is a God, that He is powerful, and that he's almighty, and that people should acknowledge that human beings consistently without fail, suppress that truth and unrighteousness.

That's the problem with general revelation. General revelation is out there, but it never converts, never converts. To get conversion, you have to go to the second half of Psalm 19 that says it's the law of the Lord that converts, right? It's the testimony of the Lord and so on and so forth.

that's, it's, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. We can go off into nature and look at nature all we want, and, and the Lord will frequently use nature to get people to start asking big questions like, man, certainly there must be a God. But nobody's gonna look at the sun and come to the the sun or the moon and come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ came to the earth, died on the cross for our sins as a substitutionary sacrifice propitiating the wrath of God, was raised from the dead to demonstrate justification, now sits at the right hand of the Father to make intercession for us, and he's coming back in all of His glory, and he will be the king forever.

You don't get that from nature.

That only comes from special revelation. And God in His goodness has given a special revelation. So let, let's talk about some external evidences that we were, had to rush by last week. so there are sufficient proofs as Calvin and the Westminster Confession of Faith acknowledges, but they cannot bring us to certainty.

The Bible message contains life-changing power. It transforms the center. And so I encourage you to do, when you're talking to people and sharing the gospel, you can talk about how the Bible has changed your life and changed many people's lives in history. neither man nor Satan has been able to destroy God's word, but the word of our God stands forever.

We'll talk more about that today. As much as people have tried to destroy the Bible, the Bible still survives. archaeology, archaeological finds confirm scripture. go check out all of the arch, all of the departments around the world that study, the archaeology behind the Book of Mormon.

Right? Go check out all those archaeological departments that support the Book of Mormon. what you're gonna find? Zippo.

There isn't any archaeological support of the Book of Mormon. but the Bible has all kinds of archaeological support. We talked about this a little bit last week. We have the Hittites, we have Nineveh, we have many different finds, that have confirmed, the scriptures.

the book of the Bible, the books of the Bible were written over a period of 1600 years, 40 different authors from various different walks of life, writing in different places, times, moods, different continents, three languages covering hundreds of controversial subjects, and yet they present absolute harmony from beginning to end. Now, let me just use this as an example of what evidence can and cannot do. This evidence convinces me. Because as I'm looking at the evidence through the glasses of the Bible and with the Holy Spirit to help me understand evidence, this makes sense.

This makes rational sense how the Bible has been assembled, and it's amazing how it's so, how so much continuity. But you talk to an unbeliever or, some unbelieving New Testament scholar and they're gonna absolutely deny this. They're gonna, they're, they're gonna try to show all the different contradictions, apparent contradictions in the Bible. And I had a guy when I was at UCR said, talked about the contradictions because the Old Testament tells us that we're supposed to shave our beards in such and such a way and wear certain types of clothing and certain types of dietary regulations and so obviously, no Christians do that today, so it's a total contradiction in Christianity and in the Bible.

And so I, I just had a little Bible lesson with him about context and original audience, and he had never heard that before, never even considered it. Old Testament passages give more than 50 prophecies of the birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ. Every prophecy written more than 400 years before his birth came true. We look at that evidence, we say, that's absolutely right.

The Book of Isaiah is written 700 years BC. You have all these things are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. What do, what are other people gonna do with that evidence? They late date the books many times and, and they say the apostles just tried to stuff and fit things that were meant to apply to another person or another place and they've, they've stuffed and fitted towards Christ.

So what should be compelling truth just falls on deaf ears many times. the Bible has been copied, translated more than any other book in the world and has come down to us amazingly well preserved. We're gonna talk about that today. This is amazing that the Bible is so incredibly well preserved for us today.

And that is that. We're, this is, we're gonna talk about. this In just a moment, last year we, we were able to have a number of student speakers come and share what we would call like a short and apologetic speech, on these types of topics, and I've asked, Samuel Pena to come this morning, and Samuel is a 16 year old who is actually a senior in high school who's gonna be graduating this year, and, just to give you guys an example of what you can be doing to share, the truth. young people can do this.

Young people study the word of God. They share the word of God with people. There's lots of great evidence out there that we can, we can use to support the scriptures. And so let's, without any further ado, let's have Samuel Pena coming up and let's welcome him.

Thank you, sire. Hi everybody, how are y'all doing today? All right, well, I'm sure all of you are familiar with the telephone game. It's one of my favorite games whenever I play when I, when I get together with my friends.

It's one person who will whisper something to the person next to them, and on it goes down the line or in the circle, and in the end, the last person who hears the story or the phrase that was uttered tells, tells everybody out loud what the phrase they heard was. And it's really fun because by the time you get to the end of the line or the end of the circle, the story of phras has completely changed. It was nothing like what the first person actually said because somewhere along the line, some mistake has been made and it has been changed.

And oftentimes this happens with historical documents too.

When they are first written thousands or hundreds of years ago, they are saying one thing and then through all the translations, the transmissions that were made throughout history, they were changed. Something was different. But if we look through the Bible, we see a different story. We look at scripture and the changes that are made are very, very minor and are grammatical at the very, at the very worst case scenario, and there's nothing really changed from when scripture was first written.

And it's remarkable considering a book that was written over a 1600 year span, and it's very different and unique from all the other historical texts at the time. Now we know that the scripture was written by human authors, but at the same time, there has to be something different or some divine influence on the scripture in order for it to have this unique text. And you've asked me today to speak on the question, how can the Bible be written by man and also be written by God?

And it's very interesting because we know that it's written by man, but it also is very different.

And I think that the answer to this question is found in the idea of inspiration, where there was a bridge between man writing the Bible and also God's words being put into the Bible as well. So first I'd like to take a look at very briefly the human aspect of the Bible, and then I'd like to take a look at the divine aspects. And finally how they both come together through So first, let Human aspects of the Bible and this is pretty much self-explanatory. we know that it was written by over 40 different human authors and we can tell this through numerous different ideas, but one of the very clear ways of telling that it was written by different people was the style of the writers.

For example, if you look at the style of Peter or John. John, Peter was a fisherman and John was a very simple man, and they both settled down and they wrote in very, not unsophisticated I would say, but the type of style they had was very different than the Polish style, for example, Paul, who was a scholar, a religious scholar. And they also would use shorter sentences, more self-explanatory, whereas Paul would go on for a long time. His paragraphs would be just a few sentences, and they would be very, very long.

So you can see a very different style from each of the different authors. But not only that, because the Bible was written over a 1600 year period, the times in which these different men were speaking, they would talk about different events that were happening at the time. For example, you look at Paul, he talks about his own experiences, for example, when he was, when he was, I think, for example, I should cut down on that. He was talking about the different times when he was shipwrecked, and he was also talking about the Roman Empire being in control of the land at the time, whereas if you go back to the time of Job, for example, there is no Roman Empire, there is no one in charge.

There was at that time a very different, a different world in which there was no specific ruling nation. So the different time periods also influenced the way in which the writers are putting their words into the Bible. So we see that there is definitely a human aspect to the Bible. However, there also must be a divine aspect to the Bible because it's very unique from all the other historical texts.

If you look at the way the Bible was written, it's very open and honest about the people that it's representing. It was written by Israel. It was written by Jews. And unlike all the other historical texts, it's very open and honest about the sins of the Jews.

If you look to other historical documents, for example, Sumerian tablets, whenever they would write down their history, they would talk about the battles in which their nation faced, and they would always down. downplay their losses. In fact, sometimes they would completely omit their losses in battle, and they would always upgrade, always talk about how amazing their victories were in battle. They would also overestimate the amount of troops that they were fighting in order to make it seem that their nation was the dominant one.

If you look at the Bible, that's completely different. They are always talking about the sinfulness of the Jewish people. The theologian AW Pink said that in the repeated mention that we have in the Old Testament of Israel's sins, we discover in light as clear as day, the absolute honesty and candor of those who reported Israel's history. The corrupt condition of their hearts is made fully manifest.

In the whole realm of literature, there is no parallel. You look to when Israel was in the desert for 40 years. They talked about how they were complaining and they were sinning. There's no sugarcoating here.

You look at all the losses, for example, at the Battle of AI. They admit we should have won the Battle of AI. We should have been able to beat them, but we were cocky and we lost. You look to Solomon, you see the exact same example.

You see Solomon turning to other gods, and they were saying Solomon fell into sin. So unlike all the other historical texts, they don't try to downplay their failures. They are open and honest about it. So there's something unique about scripture, but it's also reliable.

Professor William Albright, when he was talking about scripture, he stated that it is the most reliable historical text that he has ever seen. That's a very telling, that's a very telling quotation because Professor Albright himself is not a Christian, and yet here he is coming from a secular standpoint, and he's saying, hey, it is the most reliable text I have ever seen in my life. It's also infallible. There are no contradictions that are made in scripture as well, so there's something different about it.

And I believe that what's different about it is that it comes from a higher source. It doesn't come from just man, it comes from God, and it says so in 2 Peter 1:20 to 21. It says that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. There are two important words to look at here.

The first word is the two-letter word is, which comes from the Greek word genomi, which means origination, and the second word is interpretation, which comes from the Greek eliasis, which means determination, and in this particular context. He's talking about the determination of right and wrong, so knowing what is truth and what is false. So essentially what this verse is saying is that man never would have written scripture, but beyond that, man never would have been able to determine what is right and wrong.

Only God could have done that in saying that scripture originated from God Himself.

So there definitely is a divine influence on here, but how do we merge the two? How do we talk about both man and God writing scripture? Cause it seems like a contradiction to say that they both did it. But I think the answer to this question comes from the idea of inspiration.

Now the first commonly used when the theologians are talking about inspiration is the 2 Timothy 3:16-17. It says that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Now the word inspiration here is different than the Greek word elasis. It's not the determination of what is right and wrong.

In this verse, the word inspiration comes from the Greek theos nostas, which means God breathed. So this verse is literally saying it came from the breath of God Himself. I remember Doctor RC Sproll talking about this word, and he said that if we were actually going to interpret it, it should actually probably be interpreted as expiration, not somebody dying, but rather expiration means someone breathing out, because when we talk about when someone dies, we say they breathed his last.

He breathed out.

So the actual word expiration here fits very well. It's talking about God breathing these words out. He's literally telling you these words. But at the same time, we know that it was written by man.

So if you were to sum up essentially how these two different ideas of God and man writing the Bible come together, it's the idea that man wrote it in his own style, in his own unique way. The words with which he chose to write scripture are his own. However, the ideas and the concepts and the facts that are in scripture come from God Himself, and there's 3 things we can take from this. Knowing that an infallible God wrote scripture, what can we understand about it?

Well, the first thing that we can understand is that the Bible is in error. If we're talking about a perfect God, one who makes no errors, then obviously the words with which he writes are going to be infallible. If you look in John 7:17, it says, Sanctify the truth. Your word is truth.

So not only is God truthful, but the words which he writes are also truthful. The second thing we can derive from this is that the Bible is reliable whenever it's talking about history, science, or geographic locations. I remember a few years ago, I was very interested in the idea of Jericho and Joshua 6, it tells the story of the children of Israel marching around the walls of Jericho 7 times and then belling out at the end of it, and the walls of Jericho fell outwards. Now, many people, many historians disagreed on two things.

Number 1, they stated that this is not possible for the walls to have fallen out. And #2, they disputed the very existence of Jericho itself. For hundreds of years, they said it never existed, but finally, we were able to find the city of Jericho. But beyond that, The walls of the city fell outward.

Now whenever you have an earthquake or some natural disaster, the walls of the city would fall inward. So for the walls to have fallen outward means that something different must have happened. Some a divine influence must have happened. So once again, we see that the Bible is reliable when it comes to historical facts.

And the third and the final thing that we can take from this idea that God is the one who wrote scripture is that the Bible is uniquely authoritative for the Christians. It governs our daily life. If you look in 2 Timothy 3:16, the verse right after it, verse 17 says that all scriptures given by inspiration of God and it's profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction, and for instruction and righteousness, that the man of God will be complete and thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So not only does the Bible come from God Himself.

But it's also perfect for the Christian. It's also the way that we discover how to live our daily lives, how we determine what is right and wrong. We look through the Bible. So while it may seem like a contradiction to talk about how man and God both wrote scripture, I believe that the beautiful idea of inspiration, Theos Ntas perfectly explains how this came to be.

Man did write scripture. It was his own idea, it was his own words. It was his own way of writing the Bible. However, the ideas of scripture and the morals that are laid out in scripture come from God Himself.

So the telephone game has no effect in this place. It has no effect whatsoever. You're not gonna see over time, we're not gonna see a change in scripture. We may see small grammatical changes in the text, but when you have God Himself writing the Bible, how can you expect any significant changes to be made to the All right.

Would you want to do some Q&A? Is that OK? Is that OK? OK.

Thank you so much, Samuel. Oh, I'm on the wrong mic. I got a mic on my head. Any questions that you guys have for Mr.

Pena? Feel free. Yeah, Joe, I always Yeah, I think that the Bible definitely does talk about the inspiration of man. If you go, for example, back to 2 Peter, it talks about holy men of God were moved by God.

So you see in this verse it is talking about how there was a passion to write scripture instilled in man. However, if you look to 2 Timothy, it's not talking about that passion that man has. Instead, it's talking about the words themselves came from God. So in two different sections it's talking about.

It's good, Ben. here at the men's What's Maybe some other Thursday. You guys can connect, share your business cards. It'd be great.

hey, you're not supposed to say that. The idea of manuscripts is up for debate even amongst religious scholars. I believe we have, when it comes to the Bible, we have the most actual manuscripts, original manuscripts of any other text ever written. I think that the second is the Iliad with over 600 texts.

I forget the exact the exact number of manuscripts we do have in the Bible. However, whenever we look at the manuscripts that we do have, they come down from a time that is very, very short from when the original authors were to write it. In fact, for one text, I believe it's just a mere 60 year period from when it was first written to the translation that we. But even beyond that, when you look to the translations that were made, they were very, very, very careful that they didn't change what was written.

For example, the Massarites, they would, whenever they were translating the Bible, they would have two people over the scriptures, and one person would be writing it and the second person standing over him making sure he didn't make any changes from the original text. So while we don't have the first draft, I guess you could say of, of the Gospel of Mark or any of the gospels or any of the Bible, we don't have that, we do have many of the manuscripts that were written. Excellent.

Yeah, what he said.

Iggy, So can you, the, the question is, sixty-year period, there's still plenty of time for the content to be changed. That's, yeah, that, I guess you could say, yeah, 60 years for sure. Let's say that that is the amount of time for the Bible. If we look at scripture, however, it's remarkable that even those 60 years with all those changes that were made, it still doesn't seem to contradict itself.

So if there were changes that were made in scripture over that 60-year period, why is it that we still look at all the historical facts that it talks about and we still find archaeological and scientific evidence to back it up? So yeah, maybe there were some changes that were made. But is it likely that those changes are made? Well, given the scientific and archaeological evidence for it, I really think that it points to the fact that it wasn't changed.

And like I said before, they were very, very careful in the translations that they did make, so the chances of those changes happening are very, very. Good. Let's thanks Samuel for coming out. Job, man.

Oh, that's great. Fantastic. Awesome. Yeah, and Iggy, I'm glad you asked that question.

That's actually part of what we're gonna get into. Right now, we're probably gonna need to split this lesson up. You guys can hold me accountable and throw a rope around me in 10 minutes and tell me I'm done. but let's, let's take a look at, we're gonna segue from that into the preservation of Scripture.

The doctrine of the preservation of Scripture. How do we know that the Bible has been preserved? It's one thing to say, as Samuel was saying, that's inspired that, that God gave his words to the prophets and breathed out, but just like Iggy was asking, maybe his word has not been preserved for us today. And maybe the original words that were in the autographer, those original manuscripts have been lost.

How do we really know that God's word has been preserved for us today? Well, I'm gonna try to be consistent in this class. We start with the Bible itself. We start with God's promises itself, and then we'll also take a look at some external evidences.

But Isaiah tells us the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. God has promised that his word will stand forever. and so we're gonna look at a few passages, but part of what we're gonna argue, I don't know, we'll be able to get into it all this morning, is that God has chosen by his own decree to preserve the word of God. That's the first answer to Iggy's question, is that God has decreed that his word would survive.

That's one aspect of the doctrine of preservation. The other aspect of the doctrine of preservation is very important as well, though, and that is that God has given a duty to the church to preserve it. There's decree, and there's duty. And so, and like with, with a lot of doctrines, there's, there's the divine side and then there's the human responsibility.

And as we look, we're gonna look here in a little while at the, at just church history, is that sometimes the church has done a good job in preserving the word of God and sometimes they have not done such a good job, and yet God's decree marches on. and so we're gonna try to develop that doctrine. Let's go ahead and open up to do that. Let's open up to Jeremiah.

36, as we talk about the doctrine of the preservation of God's word. So, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Jose, and Joel, we're in Jeremiah 36. And we're gonna look at a place in the Bible. Where somebody destroys the autographer.

The original document gets burned. By this bad guy named Jehoiakim. Anybody say Jehoa Kim? God bless you.

So in verse one, we see this is Jeremiah 36:1. Now it came to pass in the 4th year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, that this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, OK, so here's God speaking to a prophet, the wind's about ready to blow through the sail. Take a scroll Of a book and write it. all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel, against Judah, against all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah, even to this day, It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the adversities which I purpose to bring upon them.

That everyone may turn from his evil way. that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin. So a couple of things I just want to point out that are interesting here. One is God is commissioning Jeremiah to write down, not just stuff that he's about ready to give him, but prophecies that have been given to him in the past, right?

So, Jeremiah had prophesized previously, but now he's being led by the Lord to put into the scripture these prophecies, assumedly by divine direction. And perfection. Verse 4, Jeremiah called Baruch, the son of, Niah, and Baruch wrote on a scroll of a book, at the instruction of Jeremiah, all the words of the Lord which he had spoken to him. So Jeremiah is, is, retelling the prophecies and Baruch is writing them down.

Skip down to verse 17. And they asked Baruch, so, so there's some bad stuff that happens and Jehoiakim is not too excited with Jeremiah. there's a, a group that's all gathered together, verse 17, they asked Baruch saying, tell us now, how did you write all these words at his instructions? So Baruch answered them.

He proclaimed with his mouth all these words to me and I wrote them with ink. In the book, then the princess said to Baruch, go and hide, you and Jeremiah, and let no one know where you are. These are actually good guys that are helping them hide because they know that Jehokim is not gonna be very excited. Let's ask a couple of questions of this text.

What type of literature do you think this passage is? Yeah, it seems like we're dealing with history, right? There's a historical telling of how these words of Jeremiah were written down in a book through Baruch, and there's some people, some court, some people in the court of Jehoiakim that are wanting to protect them. And, who was instructed to write God's words initially?

Jeremiah. So, but Jeremiah seems to understand it was OK to commission who actually wrote the scroll. Baruch, how did this process work? God had given Jeremiah the words to say, he says them out loud.

Baruch writes them down. what message did Jeremiah proclaim? Is this a happy message or a message of doom? Doom, but is there a possibility for repentance?

Yes. So it seems like as the message of judgment is being written, there is a possibility of repentance. What advices do the princes give to Baruch? Get out of here.

You gotta hide. This is bad, bad news coming up. OK. why did the princess advise Baruch and Jeremiah to go into hiding?

You'd have to read the context, but the idea is they know Jehoiakim wants to take care of business. He wants to destroy the book, he wants to kill Jeremiah, and so on. How does the description of the recording of God's words compare to 2 Peter chapter one? Is this just Jeremiah saying, hey, I got an idea.

I'm gonna just write some words to make everybody feel guilty. I'm just gonna make up some doctrines to scare everybody to keep them in line. No, he's given a word from the Lord and it's in scripture ad. Let's finish by looking at verse 20 to 26, and we'll have to call it a day.

Jeremiah 36. And we'll start in verse 20. And they went to the king, that's the princes into the court, but they stored the scroll. in the chamber, oh no, maybe I'm sorry, this is probably Baruch and Jeremiah, they stored the scroll in the chamber of Elishama, the scribe, and told all the words in the hearing of the king.

So the king sent Jehudah to bring the scroll, and he took it from Elishama, the scribe's chamber, and Jehudah read it in the hearing of the king, and the hearing of all the princes who stood beside the king. Now, the king was sitting in the winter house in the 9th month with a fire burning on the hearth before him. Does this seem to be historical? Sure seems like it, a lot of detail.

Verse 23. And it happened when Jehudai had read 3 or 4 columns. That the king cut it with the scribe's knife, cast it into the fire, and was that was on the hearth until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth. Yet they were not afraid, nor did they tear their garments, the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words.

Nevertheless, Nathan, Dalaa, and Jemmariah implored the king not to burn the scroll, but he would not listen to them. And the king commanded Jah, I'm sorry. Jeremel, the king's son, Zereah, the son of Azriel, and Shelamiah, Shelamiah, the son of Abdel, to seize Baruch, the scribe, and Jeremiah the prophet, but the Lord hid them. And so here you have what we would call an autographer.

This is an original writing. That is given to the king and the king burns it. So, God's word has been lost, right? The scripture has been lost.

This is an original document. What's Jeremiah gonna do? What's God gonna do? Is God threatened by Jehoiakim?

He's got a ring in his fingers up in heaven. What am I gonna do now? I just gave out my word. He was thrown into the fire.

There's now nothing I can do. To find out the answer, I want to encourage you guys to come back. Next week All right. In fact, I want you guys to, I want you guys to finish reading this lesson.

We're gonna come back and we're gonna hit this at the very beginning, and really try to develop this doctrine of the preservation of Scripture. Human beings have a duty. Jehoiakim had a duty to preserve the word of God, and he did not. He threw it in the fire.

But God in His providence, decrees to preserve his word. the flowers may fade, but his word will stand forever. And we're gonna see next week that over the course of church history, many people have tried to pervert the word of God. Many people have tried to destroy the word of God, but His word has come down to us, not through the telephone game.

His word has come down to us preserved, and we can trust it and we can bank on it. Any, questions, comments, criticisms, or concerns before we close in prayer? Back here? No.

Nothing. Yeah, you're welcome. Yes. Tell me your first name again.

Marcus, OK. Decided OK, so the question is, who decided which books get to be in the Bible as part of the canon? It's a really good question. Yeah, let me give you a short answer.

Well, the first thing that I'll do is, if you send me an email, I'll invite you to the Doctor Matters class that's happening on Wednesdays, and we have a whole lecture on that with all the notes. We spent an hour and a half on that one question, and you could listen to that if you want and go through all the notes. The short answer is that God did and the church recognized it., our government makes money and then we recognize originals, right? People don't make the money, they recognize the money.

God is the one that created the canon, the church merely recognizes the canon, and, there were, there's both internal and external tests that were used in the process of canonization. It was not an event like the Book of Mormon dropping out of the sky in golden plates. It was a process, not an event. And so, and so we argue for God guiding that process, and he knew which books he was inspiring.

Jesus had pre-authenticated his apostles to go out and write his word. He said, I'll bring all things back to remembrance. I will guide you into all truth. they began to write the word of God with their associates.

These books began to be, passed around to the various churches. The church never formalizes doctrine until it gets attacked, you'll notice in church history. And so people are just reading the books of the Bible and they're all happy until people, until pseudopographical works start rising up. People start writing books saying, this is from Paul, but it's not, right?

Then a guy in the 2nd century rises up named Marcian and says, I don't like any of the Jewish books. I'm gonna get rid of anything Jewish. Then a guy named Moninus rises up and says, we don't need the written word of God, we need a fresh revelation from the Lord. We call it Eminem, Martian and Motinus.

That's the Eminem of canonization. Because of the tax on the word of God, the church has to begin to formalize and so they begin to go into a formal process over many years to recognize the books that God had already inspired. That's the short answer. of canonization.

The ultimate, the ultimate support of canonization is we believe in God's divine providence and, and, and leading the church to recognize the books that he had inspired. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice. Maybe next week I'll bring in and read you a little bit of the Gospel of Thomas, that people say, hey, this should be one of the books of the Bible. Basically, in the Gospel of Thomas, it says, when he makes all females males, then they will go to heaven.

So, in order to go ahead, to go to heaven, as all females must become males, that sounds just like Jesus, right? Just like Jesus' teaching. And you got people saying, why don't we have the Gospel of Thomas in the Bible? Because it's nonsense, Gnostic nonsense that the church very easily recognized and rejected.

That's why we don't have the Gospel of Thomas in the Bible. But great question. I love the whole concept of canonization. I think that was it.

It seemed like I saw one other hand, but I can't remember. Yeah, Mitch B They got together Yeah, I'm not aware of that. OK. OK, with the King James translators.

Yeah, there, there are some issues there about the King James. Maybe I can tell a real quick 1611 King James story. Would you guys allow that or you want to just close a prayer? Oh yeah, I'll tell it.

OK. So, we have friends, right? Who would be described as King James only, right? You have friends that are that way.

It's like God inspired the King James. It's nothing to do with the originals and so on and so forth. What they don't realize, first of all, is that the 1611 King James went through hundreds of edits. Really, when we talk about the, the 1611 King James, we're talking about the 1789 edition of the King James Version.

It was the finalized version that comes down to us today. And that's any translation, right? We're not, we're not claiming that English translations are inspired and inerrant. They go through editions, right?

When my professor, Doctor Barrett came into our class. He had his fresh New Testament in Bangladesh. He translated the New Testament into Bangladesh and he walks into class with it hot off the press. what he said to us?

He said, I'm so nervous to find the first mistake. Was he saying that God's word is mistaken? No, he's saying he is a human being can make mistakes and has to go through many additions to get to a good place where it's a good translation for the Bangladesh people. All English translations have gone through a similar process, including the King James.

One of my other professors, Doctor Stitzinger, in order to demonstrate some of the, the messiness of the translation process, he used to teach at a King James only university or college, and he would leave his facsimile of the 1611 open to the Book of Maccabees. And the students would walk in and be like, what's this? He goes, that's a 1611. Why is Maccabee's in the 1611?

Because they decided to put, King James ordered to put the apocrypha right in the middle of it. Oh, I didn't know that. There you go. That's your 1611 King James only story.

So he just loved getting a rise out of students seeing Maccabees, Bell and the Dragon, Talbot, right smack in the middle of their 1611. Does that upset you or? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I, feel free to talk to me afterwards if you guys want to talk about that.

That's a whole another issue, 1611 King James. All right, let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your goodness to us and preserving your word. Thank you for just allowing Samuel to come out and share with us, and just what a blessing he has been, and we pray you bless him.

Lord, help us to have faith in your word and understanding it is our first and final authority. And yet there are many sufficient firm proofs, that demonstrate as we have the right glasses on and look out at the world, we see that it comports with reality and is reasonable. We pray, Lord, however, that as we talk to friends and family that we would just recognize your spirit has to do an awakening work. We'd be patient and humble.

Realizing that you've been gracious in our lives. It's not because we're smarter or better that we've come to know the gospel, it's because you have been so gracious to us sinners. And so help us to be patient, kind with our friends and family, waiting for you to awaken them, to rescue them from the clutches of the devil. And, we pray, Father, that we would go out this week, share the gospel with our friends and family like it is their lucky day.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen.