The Preservation of God's Word

I want to start off with a little commercial, for the apologetics class, that is actually meeting right now down in 111. we have one class that meets at 9:15, the fellowship hall, the other one downstairs is taught by Bill Payne. And we've just actually today's the last day that we're doing a series called Has God Said where we're answering different attacks and questions on the scriptures and I'll actually be preaching a message that's related to that topic this morning, but starting next week we move into our third and final section of apologetics and we're titling this section Hope for Hard Questions where we'll be dealing with questions like how do we know that God really exists.

we'll be dealing with questions like, aren't Christians just a bunch of hypocrites?

why is it that Christians put so much emphasis on things like abortion and homosexuality? What about Islam? Why does God allow evil? And this is just a great opportunity to come and, and learn how to respond to these questions.

The format of the class is basically we, for the 1st 1015 minutes, we process the previous week's question. and then we have a student speaker that comes in, normally a high school student or even a junior high student that will give us introduce the new topic to us, and these kids have just done a great job, and then afterwards I or Bill will get up and teach and we'll give you a little bit of homework to go and, and put together some responses to, to the question of the day.

So we'd encourage you to come out next week for hope for hard questions and we've got some outstanding. Student speakers that will be joining us over the next 7 weeks, some of whom attend Cornerstone and others that do not attend Cornerstone that will be coming in special to share with us, some of their studies.

This morning, I'm going to be trying to address a question that we dealt with a few weeks ago and that is, have the words of scripture been adequately preserved for us today? all of us, I assume, have a copy of God's word either electronically or a hard copy like this, MacArthur study Bible. And, but the question can be raised, how do we know that the words that I have in my copy of God's word in English? are really the words of God.

Hasn't the Bible been translated over and over and over again? You may have heard the accusation that the New Testament is full of 400,000 mistakes. These are, this is a claim that some people make. You can go online and see people that say that the New Testament is full of 400,000 mistakes just in the New Testament.

I've been talking about the Old Testament. How do we respond to such An accusation and then just the accusation where people will say, well, the Bible's been translated so many different times. It's like the old telephone game. How can we honestly think that we have the words of Christ 2000 years later?

you guys have played the telephone game. so you say you get your children in a circle and you tell the first child, I like wearing bananas on my head, and then they spread that around and it comes out something weird like I love wearing bandanas on my head or the opposite, however you want to do it. And so if we've been playing this this telephone game for 2000 years, how can we possibly trust the fact that we have the words of God in our labs or on our electronic devices? These are important questions for us to answer.

And while we would say no, we are not playing the telephone game, and I'll explain why later, there are significant challenges to the transmission of the scriptures. There are Questions that are raised by Muslims and Jehovah Witnesses or Mormons, even if you talk to them, they're constantly going to tell you, yeah, the Bible insofar as it's been, as it's been translated correctly. is OK, but the problem is we have all kinds of translation problems. And that begs the question is, when you talk to a friend who says that the Bible has some big translation problems, a lot of times as Christians we just assume the burden of proof and immediately try to start marching in our evidence to demonstrate that the Bible's OK.

But I want to encourage you to do what Greg Kochel suggests in his book Tactics that we don't automatically assume the burden of proof that we ask a couple of questions first. The reason it's especially important for us to ask questions today in a postmodern age, a postmodern culture, is that people think they're making arguments when they're not. All they're doing is doing oftentimes what Greg Cochel talks about is, is, is building a roof with no walls. They've given you the conclusion, but they haven't established an argument.

So for somebody to say, I reject the Bible because it's been translated so many different times, and then they throw down their gavel and they think that they've made their case. There's a big problem. All they've done is stated a conclusion. They haven't even given you a premise.

They haven't even begun an argument. And a lot of times as Christians we accept the burden of proof and start trying to offer evidence for something that's not even an argument. It's a conclusion. And so before we get into the sermon proper, I just want to encourage you to ask two questions when you're first faced with those types of questions from friends or family or whatever.

The first question is just to say, oh what do you mean by that? It's a very simple question. The person says it's been translated over and over and over and over again, and you say, what do you mean by that? And Greg Cochel tells you, and I've seen this myself, a lot of people, as soon as you ask that question, will just stop and won't say anything because they don't know what they mean by it.

They're just parroting it. They've just heard it from somebody. What do you mean by that? Well, the Bible, what was it?

It had all those languages back then like Latin and French and German and, and then it's been come down to today, and here we are 2000 years later, and now it's in English. And it's like a big telephone game, and so how can we really trust it. OK, great. Wow.

OK. Latin and German and French, that's great. So how do that? That's the second question.

How do that? And for most people they're just going to stop and be like, Well, I saw it on History Channel or I saw it on YouTube, or that's what my grandma said or something like that. Most people don't have any way of building the argument. They haven't really studied the issues enough to build a case.

They're just giving you a conclusion. They don't even know half the time that they're just giving you a conclusion. And so we need to graciously come along and just ask a couple of simple questions to help them see that you don't even have an argument here. You're just giving me your opinion.

And so we don't accept the burden of proof right out the gate. We can demonstrate to them very simply that no, the holy scriptures have not come to us through the telephone game. All modern translations, you look at the New American Standard right here, New King James NIV. These translators go back and use 5600 manuscripts, the most manuscripts of any ancient document in the world, 126 documents that are available from the first three centuries closest to the originals.

And they go back to the original Greek and Hebrew and Aramaicic, and they translate from the originals into the modern language. The new King James doesn't go back to the King James and translate from there, and the King James didn't just go to Tyndale. The King James authors used Erasmus' Texus Receptus and went to Greek manuscripts and translated from that. And so it's not the telephone game.

They're skipping over hundreds of years back to ancient manuscripts to develop the modern translation. So before we even get into any of that stuff, you can ask two basic questions. What do you mean and how do? What do you mean?

And how do? And those are the two same questions that you can ask in virtually every apologetic encounter that you'll have with friends and family, in order to help at least, be a listener and try to find out what it is that they really believe. Well, what I want to do this morning is, is we're not going to get a ton into all the evidential arguments we did that in our Sunday school class. Those notes are up on our website CCC, and you can access that.

If you can't find it, let me know and I'll help you get to all that material. What I want to really develop this morning is our doctrinal basis or our theological construct for even answering such a question. It's very important that we have in our minds what we really believe about the Bible and about its translation and transmission, but before we even begin to respond to the unbeliever. I'm convinced that one of the first burdens of apologetics is to help the Christian have a basis and hope for their own faith that they can give a reason for that hope.

Right? We need to understand why we have hope so that we can now give reasons for the hope. And so, let me give some preliminary stuff and then I'm going to get to my traditional three-point message. And So here's some preliminary things from our doctrinal statement.

First of all, Cornerstone's doctrinal statement about the Holy Scripture says, we believe that the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be verbally inspired word of God, the final authority for faith in life, inherent in the original writings. So we believe here at Cornerstone that the original writings of Peter, Paul, and all the scriptural writers are without error. That God superintended the Spirit moved in such a way to where when the authors of Scripture wrote, it was preserved from all errors.

In the original writings, here's a question.

Do we have any of the original writings in our possession today? No, we do not. We don't have any of the original writings. We have 5600 copies of multiple pages of manuscripts.

It's not 56 pages of manuscripts. It's 56 copies of multiple pages of manuscripts in which we can determine the reading of the original because there are so many different manuscripts out there. It's almost like it's it's like having a puzzle and we have all of, we have copies of all the pieces we just need to reassemble the pieces in one of my some of my classes. One of the exercises I'll do is I'll have a, I'll have a dictation for this row.

This is like north. And this is south and this is the east row, and this is the west row, and I'll dictate a long sentence to each person in the front row, and they have to write it down word for word with all the punctuation and correct and capitalization, all that stuff. I dictate it and then I have them dictate it to the person behind them and them dictate it to the person behind them and so on and so forth. Then I go and I rip up all the originals plus several generations of a couple of the rows and I ask them, Can we determine the original?

If we compare these rows, do you think we can figure out what the original writing was supposed to be? And in every case, this is a simplistic example, but in every case you can. Because you can find where the generation of mistakes occurred in the family in the row of the mistake. One person in the second row mishears something or miswrites or puts a different punctuation maker or spells something differently, and then every row after that carries on the same mistake.

And so this is what we call textual criticism is we, the Lord in His providence has allowed for so many copies that we can compare all of the copies and determine the original and get back with 99% accuracy. We're going to demonstrate why it's 99% accuracy and not 100% to the original manuscript. OK, so let's set that aside for a second. Let's look at the 1689 Baptist Confession of faith.

When we say Baptist confession of faith, this isn't Southern Baptist or Northern Baptist or all the different Baptists. This is back to just the the Reformed Baptists of the 1600s, those who believed in infant who didn't believe in infant baptism, in other words. So they say in paragraph 8, the Old Testament in Hebrew, which was the native language of the people of God of old, and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God, that's the doctrine of inspiration, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, that's the doctrine of preservation.

That's what we're going to be talking about, that by his singular care and providence He has kept His word preserved in all ages or pure in all ages.

are therefore authentic so as in all controversies of religion the church is finally to appeal to them. That's authority and sufficiency. The next page we're not going to spend a lot of time on that other than to say that the Baptists, as well as all the reformers said that the Bible should be translated into the vulgar language of every nation. What does that mean?

Should we translate the Bible into cuss words or whatever? No, translate the Bible into the vulgar language that means the non-church language, not Latin, but into the language of each people. And so, so that people could read the Bible for themselves so they can have a translation of the scriptures in their own language. So with that we're going to develop this first part of the Baptist Confession of faith statement.

His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages mixed with the concept of translation into the vulgar languages, and this is where we start when we talk about the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture. Here's my thesis this morning. This is our main point. The doctrine of the preservation of scripture provides the theological construct for answering all questions about the transmission and translation of the scriptures.

This doctrine that we're calling the preservation of Scripture gives us the matrix, gives us the construct, gives us the basis and way of thinking about all questions that would arise about how has the Bible been transmitted and how has it been translated. We have to have this doctrine in mind to be able to properly answer these questions, both to have hope for ourselves and also to make sure that we're giving right authority to the scriptures and not giving undue authority to external evidences while external evidences are obviously important.

And so here's the three points that we're going to make about this doctrine that God's determination we're going to talk about God's determination to preserve His word first of all. We're going to talk about our duty to preserve God's word and then we're going to talk about our directive from God.

So let's talk about the first aspect of this doctrine. And there are really two aspects of this doctrine and then an application, and this is the first aspect of the doctrine, very important, God's determination to preserve His word. And so we will define this part of the doctrine this way. The doctrine or the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture is the doctrine that God has and will adequately protect His word.

I think some of you guys have fill in some of the kids, I think you guys have inserts. Did you guys get them? OK, so the doctrine that God has and will adequately protect His word, God is determined to preserve His word. He's decreed it.

He's promised it. And we see this from various passages of the Bible. Matthew 5:18, for instance, till heaven and earth pass away, Jesus says, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass away from the law until all is fulfilled. Speaking of the Old Testament, Jesus says, it's all going to stay with us until it's entirely fulfilled.

And not every prophecy of the Old Testament has been fulfilled in, in, in completion. And so the Bible will be with us one jot. So by analogy, one cross of a T or one dot of an I will not depart from God's word. Psalm 11989.

The psalmist says, Forever, O Lord, your word is settled. It's preserved in heaven. And so we see that God has determined to settle His word in heaven, and He's also determined to protect His word on earth. Back in, when I was in seminary, 19, about 1997, 1 of my professors, Doctor William Barrick, who was a missionary in Bangladesh, he spent 9 years translating from the Greek manuscripts a fresh translation for the people of Bangladesh because the only copy of the New Testament they had was in a language that was more archaic than the King James is to us, the original King James.

And so virtually nobody could really understand it or access it. And so he was part of this translation team for 9 years to put from the Greek manuscripts to put together a Greek translation of the New Testament for those who lived in Bangladesh, and I remember him walking into class and he held up a copy. This was his first personal copy hot off the press of this New Testament in Bangladesh. And he said, I'm afraid to find the first mistake.

And it wasn't that he questioned whether there would be a mistake. He knew he would find one. And what was he saying by that? Was he saying that God makes mistakes?

Was he saying that God's eternal world, word in heaven has mistakes in it? Was he saying that the autographer has mistakes, the original manuscripts? No, he's saying me, Dr. William Barrick, who have worked on this fresh translation, am not a perfect person.

And while I've worked very hard to put together this new edition of the New Testament, I know that it will go through editions and we will find mistakes. And they did. They found spelling mistakes. They found word order mistakes.

And the biggest mistakes they found is just certain word choices that didn't entirely translate the best way to that people. While they worked hard with native speakers, once the Bible got out there and it was being read, they found that there were certain portions of it that did not translate well, and so they had to update it. This is no threat to the word of God as the original word of God or the autographer. This is just a reality, and it's this particular professor that argues for the preservation of God's word and argues from Psalm 119 that his word is preserved in heaven.

He says in an article on the preservation of God's word, and he says this quote, Psalm 11989. is the key biblical reference. God's revelatory word is fixed firmly in heaven regardless of what might happen to His word on earth. It is securely preserved in his mind.

The primary residence of God in heaven is in heaven, so it is only logical that the psalmist would define the presence of the eternal Word as the divine abode. And this is exactly what we see is there's many passages all over the scripture that demonstrate and teach us that God's word is settled, it is founded, it stands, it does not pass away. There's all kinds of synonyms for just the fact that the Bible is secure, that God's word. From his decree and his divine will, his volition is preserving his word.

Louis P Schaeffer has this to say about this doctrine, the preservation of the scriptures. Like the divine care over the writing of them and over the formation of them into the canon is neither accidental, incidental, or fortuitous. It is the fulfillment of the divine promise. God has promised to preserve His word.

And so we have, we see God fulfilling that. both in heaven and on earth, though in different ways. And so that brings us to our second point, the second development of this doctrine, and that is our duty to preserve God's word. God is determined to preserve it.

But the part of this doctrine, I think is very important for us to understand is that we have a duty, we have stake in this. God has given us a responsibility. We have a duty to preserve God's word. And so let's add to our definition.

The preservation of scripture, this doctrine. Is the doctrine that God has and will adequately protect his written word, but not just that, and yet his people. His people have a corporate responsibility to preserve, protect, and proclaim His word amid attacks from the devil and the world. So we have stake in this game.

God has promised to preserve His word, but He has also given us human responsibility, particularly His people have a responsibility to preserve His word. Let's look at a couple of passages, just a few that demonstrate this. One would be Jeremiah 26, and you can open there with me if you. If you would.

Jeremiah 26, Verse 2. I'm still not used to the electronic age where I don't hear pages turning. It's like everybody's like. Just, I'm still trying to get used to that.

Jeremiah 26:2, thus says the Lord, Stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak to all the cities of Judah who have come to worship in the Lord's house. All the words that I have commanded you to speak to them, do not omit a word. So he gives Jeremiah the words to say and then he commands him, Do not omit a word. So God is decreeing His word to go out, but then he's given Jeremiah a responsibility, and within that responsibility he gives him a warning Don't omit anything.

It's the same warning that we see in Proverbs 30:6 not to add to the word, or that warning at the end of Revelation, Do not add or take away from the word lest these curses of this book come upon you. There's many such similar warnings in the Bible not to add to or take away. And so Dr. Brick, as he fleshes out this aspect of the doctrine, he says, quote, God is the chief operative in preserving His word unchanged in heaven.

On earth, however, God's people are responsible for preserving and transmitting the scriptures. A series of repeated prohibitions in Scripture defines the accountability for preservation on Earth. It should be obvious to the reader that God does not prohibit something that is impossible for an individual to do. When he prohibits lying, it is because all an individual is capable of lying.

If no one could tell a lie, God would not need to prohibit lying, right? If God says don't lie, then it implies that there's the possibility of lying by the very prohibition, correct? If God says do not add or take away, what does this imply? Dr.

Barrett goes on that God prohibits the addition to and subtraction from His word is testimony to the fact that His people can and at times do add to His written word or subtract from it. And so there is a human responsibility and we see these commands in many different places of scripture where we're commanded not to add or diminish. What are some ways that humans have added to or taken away from God's word? I'll just give you some examples.

There's malicious attempts to destroy it like Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 36. God had given a revelation to Jeremiah. Jeremiah dictates it to Baruch. Baruch writes it down.

He goes through all the political channels to deliver it. Finally he gets to the king. The king doesn't like it. He cuts it in half and throws it in the fire.

A malicious attempt to destroy God's word. You had the Waldenses of, I believe, the, I'm always forgetting this, the 12th century. These were the ones that followed Waldo as their leader, and he really taught that man, we need the Bible in our own language and we're going to go preach the word and we're going to give out copies of the New Testament. Well, the inquisitors didn't like this.

The church proper went out and tried to destroy all the copies of the Waldensian scriptures and tried to destroy the Waldensians. other ways, unintentional or intentional copy errors. as we see the scriptures transmitted, we're not talking about the original autographa, we're talking about as it's being copied. Sometimes you have unintentional errors, you have spelling mistakes, for instance, formalized spelling is a is a fairly new, it's a modern convention.

If you go and research Shakespeare and see how he spelled different words, he's all over the map. Because there's no, there, there wasn't a real conventional way to spell a lot of the things he was writing about. In the same way, when you look at copies of manuscripts, one of the variants that you will see is people are spelling things in different ways. And that's that accounts for a huge portion, I think 75% scholars estimate of the 400,000 mistakes, which by the way, nobody has been able to document this.

This is some claim that's this roof without walls. It's one of those arguments again that nobody proves. They just say, did there's 400,000. Mistakes in the New Testament.

What they don't tell you is we're talking about 5600 manuscripts, multiple pages. If you count for all of those mistakes, there's about a mistake for every 6 pages if there are 400,000 mistakes, and that 75% of those mistakes are spelling errors. And then another huge percentage of them have to do with word order because the Greek language you can stick words in just about any different order and it means the same thing. So it's only about 3%.

There's different estimates of of of copy errors, variants, not in the originals, but variants that have anything substantial to do with the meaning of the text. And nothing affects any major doctrine and so it's, it's actually very miraculous and providential if you want the notes and all this stuff and all the details on that little side footnote, we can go, you can go to our website. OK, so there's unintentional and intentional copiers. An example of intentional copy errors would be like Pastor Milton was preaching the last couple of weeks on the Samaritans, right?

And the Samaritans, they did not like the rest of the Old Testament because it talked a lot about Jerusalem and exalted Jerusalem, and even the Pentateuch. Any time you have a reference to Jerusalem in the Pentateuch, the 1st 5 books of the Bible, what did the Samaritans do? They changed it to Gerazim. And it's the only example of anywhere in the manuscript evidence where Jerusalem gets suddenly you have Gerizim showing up in this tradition of texts and it's very easy for scholars to look and say, oh yeah, of course that's the Samaritan Pentateuch.

They hate Jerusalem, right? So this is an example of intentionally trying to change something in God's word. But God in His providence has given us so many different manuscripts that even when people try to mess it up, they can't get away with it. Because unlike Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon, it wasn't one guy behind a curtain.

One guy behind a curtain with special glasses telling everybody on the other side of the curtain, Here's what the word of God says, and oh by the way, I'm just going to happen to write it in Elizabethan English even though it's the 1800s, so it sounds like the King James Bible. What's that all about? When it comes to the Bible, what we hold in our laps, there are so many different manuscripts and copies, nobody could possibly get a monopoly on this thing. And so when people say things like, Oh, some guy just made all that up, they haven't a clue what they're talking about.

I wouldn't say it that way. Don't, don't say, you haven't a clue what you're talking about. That's not the way to do it. Ask the questions.

Listen to Greg Cochel, do it his way, OK, be nice, and then bring out the hammer, OK. Unintentional, and so then we also have unintentional and intentional mistranslations. An example of an unintentional mistranslation in Jerome's Latin Vulgate, you have the translation of the Greek word metanoia to be do penance. So for 1000 years you have Christians believing that they have to do penance in order to satisfy the Greek verb metanoia.

And we'll talk about how Luther fixes that later. You have today gender neutral translations. We have, we're living in a day where there's a lot of people out there that just don't like the fact that God is called Father and that Jesus is called the Son and the relationship that you have between the Father and the Son and the Spirit. And so there are translations out there that just, just fix that.

They never call God Father. They don't even call Jesus Son. They're taking away from the word of God in order to drive home theological error and heresy, and so the scriptures do get twisted by intentional mistranslation. You also have false teaching and false prophecy.

Tim Challis's blog right now, he's got a series going on which is excellent. I'd highly commend it to you on false teachers. He's going through all of church history and he's just given short little articles on false teachers and it's just a fantastic blog series, and so I commend that to you, all the people that came along and said, Oh well, we don't really need this part of the Bible, or here I've got a new fresh revelation that totally crumpds everything that God has said in his previous revelations.

And so you see that stuff, you see also imperfect teaching, immature teaching, and false teaching.

So not every bad teaching is false teaching, I hope, depending on how you're going to categorize it. There's imperfect teaching, there's immature teaching. I've gone back to lots of my notes. There's times where I'm looking over some old Sunday school notes.

I'm getting ready to prepare for class. I look at something I wrote about 10 years ago and I'm like, holy smokes, that's heresy. Or maybe not heresy, but it's like, I don't believe that anymore. And, and so hopefully, we're maturing in our teaching.

And so, in that respect, all of us have added to or taken away from God's word at some point in our lives. As we mature, that we have this propensity, because we are human, and we're not walking around without air, right? None of us here that I know are in the place of the Son of God. And so I can have misunderstandings.

I can have bad hermeneutics. I can translate something wrong. I can misinterpret something, and I've done that. I was 14 years old, a brand new Christian.

I'm walking down the street and I'm telling my buddy, yeah, the Lord's coming back in December. This is 1983. he's coming back. He's coming back.

You better repent. And this guy was shaking in his boots. He's ready to repent. And then December came and his conviction left.

I was a false teacher, false prophet. I even told him, I said, Yeah, I've been having dreams. I don't know where that came from. I just having dreams.

And, so hopefully I've matured from that nonsense, right? you hope so. What in the world am I doing up here? so, hopefully, we're maturing and growing and repenting.

And so let's talk about, how have God's people with this duty that we have, how God's people preserved God's word, over the centuries. Well, by rewriting destroyed copies, that copy that Jehoiakim threw on the fire, fire, God comes back to Jeremiah and says, here, I want you to write this down. And he recounts the whole prophecy word for word back to Jeremiah who dictates it to Baruch, and then God says, and let me give you something else. Jehoiakim, he's going to die and his body's going to be thrown out on the street in the cold.

Tell him that. So God added to His word and gave a little special something for anybody that would throw his Bible or His word in the fire. God doesn't take those things lightly, malicious attempts to destroy His word. Remember we were talking about the Waldenses.

The Waldensians, they had a high regard for the written word of God translated in their own language, and they would go out and preach it, and they would pass out copies of the Bible, and they memorized the whole Bible as a community. Every The family had an assignment to memorize a certain portion of scripture. Why? Because these guys were always getting caught by the Inquisition and their Bibles were being burned.

And so even when the inquisitors got a hold of them and burned all their Bibles, they would all sit down and recite the whole Bible back to each other and rewrite the whole thing. Because every family had an assignment. Now, of course, sometimes whole families got wiped out and so you'd lose a couple of chapters, and that would be a bummer, but But they were, these guys were serious about the preservation of God's word and following their leader Waldo. By the way, the inquisitors, they used to use this old Latin phrase, they would say, quo Waldo.

Which the translation means Where's Waldo? and so that's where that whole thing came from, so. I think you guys, I better start running. You guys are gonna burn me here free.

So yeah, if you look in the back page of the Where Waldo, they'll normally give credit to, I'm just joking. OK, so that's one. So there's malicious attempts. There's, so monastics, how have we preserved God's word?

A lot of times we will look back on church history and we'll look at the monastics and we'll be like, what were these crazy people doing? And, but what? God used the monastic movement to preserve His word. It was the monks that secured the vast majority of Greek manuscripts that we have and even Hebrew manuscripts that we have, and while not everybody was a professional copyist, a lot of the copies we have came from very unprofessional pastors and just congregants.

The ones that were preserved by the monks were preserved very well in the way that they would copy the manuscripts and keep them and even hide them. And and so it's because of the monastic movement that we have so many manuscripts in our possession today. You also have translation corrections. We talked about Jerome's unfortunate translation.

Well, it was because of Erasmus' New Testament texts. He gets a hold of a lot of these manuscripts. This is the religious renaissance, is this resurrection of all these ancient texts. Erasmus gets a hold of a lot of Greek texts.

He puts together his Greek New Testament. It's guys like Luther that get a hold of Erasmus' testament and start combing through it and comparing it to the Latin Vulgate, right? Jerome's Vulgate. And Luther comes across the Greek word metanoia, which Jerome had been translating as due penance, and he studies it.

He's like, that's not what this means. This means change your mind. This means repent, have a change of mind about your sin, and call upon Christ alone for your salvation. That is a huge translation correction.

And it shows you that while God's word was always there, preserved in the text, it had been lost for about 1000 years. That phrase led a lot of people into darkness for 1000 years, and Luther, by God's providence, rediscovered it and retaught it to the church, which is one of the foundational statements of the Reformation. You have a similar problem. This doesn't have.

This isn't really related to translation, but just how God's word can get lost. Remember in Josiah's day that they had lost the Book of the Law for several 100 years. All of a sudden they find it. I don't know where they found it.

They pull it out and they start reading it and all of a sudden everybody's repenting and they have this big revival in the day of Josiah that demonstrates another historical example of our responsibility to preserve God's word. Right? As leaders, we need to preserve God's word, as families, as dads, we need to preserve God's word and keep it before our family, to not lose it. We have scholars today who are writing against the gender neutral translations and demonstrating and informing the church how this is wrong and it's bad translation.

We have guys like Wayne Gruden and John Piper and all kinds of other people that are doing great jobs in that. There's humble teaching that boldly corrects false prophecy as we come in humility and identify the false prophets out there. We can identify that and preserve God's word. There's maturing teaching and learning, learning from our mistakes.

I was at the master seminary, I think it was 1998, when John MacArthur got up at chapel and said, I want to confess to you all that I have been wrong about the sonship of Christ issue. He says, I now believe and affirm the eternal sonship of Christ, rather than the incarnational sonship of Christ. You don't need to know what that means. The point is, is that here is a man of God who's been preaching the Word of God, and he was passionately teaching one doctrine, and then came to the realization that he was an error.

And got up before everybody, really the whole world that followed him and follows him and says, I was wrong. I repent of that teaching, and now I affirm the eternal sonship of Christ. What an example. What an example.

But also what a reminder that all of us have things in our theology that needs to be open to inspection. And we need to be ready to repent on a daily basis. And that's the final point here is how can we preserve God's word is we can repent from adding to and taking away from God's word. When we recognize how we've misunderstood God's word, or even how we as Christians have suppressed God's word, we can repent of that and keep God's word going on from generation to generation.

We can pass the baton to the next generation. How did Josiah, how did the law get lost? No doubt there was a generation that did not want to hear the law and they hid it. And then hundreds of years go by, of darkness.

I can't tell you how many times I've counseled with a young person who doesn't believe it's biblical to date an unbeliever, and they acknowledge what the Bible says about being unequally yoked, and then all of a sudden they start hanging out with an unbelieving guy or gal, and their heart starts fluttering, and then all of a sudden they're coming up with a new interpretation of that passage. They're, they're taking away from God's word or people say, yeah, I don't believe in divorce, and, and they have a, they understand a certain biblical perspective of divorce and remarriage, and then before it there's some guy that fits their fancy better and their husband's really not cutting it at home and then they divorce and they go get remarried and their whole interpretation of the passage suddenly changes.

Why did that happen? Did the passage change?

No, they've decided to take away from God's word or to add to God's word to fit their lifestyle. We need to repent of that stuff, even if you've done some of that in your past. I remember when Pastor Milton started preaching in this church through the issue of divorce and remarriage and gave the position from the pulpit of our view of divorce and remarriage. It was unsettling and devastating to some of our people.

But I got to tell you that we, we praised God for the way that our people responded to that series and said, what, I sinned in the way that I divorced my previous spouse and remarried, and I repent of that now, and I'm going to stay faithful to this current marriage. That we saw an incredible maturity in the way people responded to that series and we praise the Lord for that. I was talking to a pastor friend just this last week who, when they got up to preach on divorce and remarriage, they announced the series.

They tried to do it in a very gospel centered way.

They said we just want to really go after this issue, and they had at least 2 people that they know of that just refused to come to church, left the church before they even started preaching on the topic. Because it was so painful to them and they just didn't want to wrestle with the fact that they could have been wrong in their previous divorce. We need to be open, we need to be ready to repent, and realize that God is a loving God. And when we come and repent of our sins, when you read, read Jeremiah 36 as a care group or as family worship later in this week, and you'll see at the beginning of that prophecy, God's desire, he tells them that judgment is coming, but his whole purpose for it is so that they would repent and be forgiven.

That was his whole heart at the beginning of Jeremiah 36. And if Jehoiakim would have come and said, Man, I need to fall on my knees and repent, God would have done that. When we fall on our knees and repent of our adding to and taking away from Scripture, God's right there, ready to meet with us. But beware lest we like Jehoiakim want to throw his word in the fire, or we distance ourselves from the body because we don't want to hear God's word.

Be careful, be careful, repent of these things. Let's look at our 3rd point and final point, and that is this. God has given a, he has a a divine decree. He's determined that he will preserve his word, and he's given us a duty.

And we want to fulfill that duty. We have a directive from God, and that directive is to fulfill our duty in this generation, in the hope of God's determination. In other words, we have a duty to preserve God's word. Just like every generation has had to carry that torch, and sometimes that torch has been dropped, and sometimes parts of scripture have been altered by unintentionally or intentionally, each generation has a responsibility to preserve and protect and proclaim God's word.

And will we, will we take up that baton in our generation, but do so in the hope of God's determination, in other words, in the hope of His decree and promise that while I have a human responsibility, it's not like God says, Mike, you better take care of it or the whole church will fail. Mike Barry, if you don't preserve my word, the gates of hell will prevail, and it's on you, buddy. No, that's not what the Bible says. I have a human responsibility, but yet I have the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail, and God's word is preserved forever in heaven, and He will make sure that His word is preserved on the earth, and he will win.

And so we have this hope and that's how we fulfill our duty. That's why Martin Luther can write his hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Part of this hymn is about the preservation of the word of God. Let's read here like verse 2 and 3.

Martin Luther says, And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed His truth, that's His word, to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. His rage we can't endure, for lo, his doom is sure. One little word shall fell him, and that one little word is the gospel, and that gospel is really reflected in the whole Bible.

And so this word will fell the devil. I love saying that fell the devil, fell the devil. I don't know, I like that word. That word, the next, the next part of the hymn, that word, the gospel as it's represented in the Bible above all earthly powers, no thanks to them abideth.

Who do you think he's pointing to? Rome. No thanks to them, this word abides. The spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with aight let goods and kindred go.

This mortal life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still His kingdom is forever. And so here he's just stating the fact that God's going to fulfill it. You, we do our duty, but we're going to win.

Even before you start the game, you're going to win. The devil loses, right? God wins. And we see this illustrated we've already pretty much talked about Jeremiah 36.

I'm not going to rehash all of that. I'd encourage you guys to read this on your own as a follow up to what we've been talking about. Let me just say a couple of final statements and we'll close. Which is a meaningless.

Sentence for a preacher. There are ways throughout the scripture that we see God's word was given. And then it was lost. And yet God has been in the business throughout the history of the world to resurrect His word, that this is actually part of our salvation.

It's part of redemptive history. It's not just church history, it's part of redemptive history that we have a word that we can rely on today. Adam and Eve had the word of God, and then they were kicked out of the garden, and they did not, or some generations did not pass that word on. And then before it, you have multiple religions and multiple gods.

Then God destroys the whole earth. And Noah and his family get off the ark, and I'll guarantee you they had the word of God. And yet it was lost again. And it's only a few generations goes by.

You have multiple religions and multiple faiths worshiping false gods. Moses comes down with 10 commandments written by the finger of God, and he sees the people of God in sin, and he crashes them to the ground. But guess what? They weren't lost.

God rewrites them again. God gives a prophecy to Jeremiah, and he says, go speak this truth that I'm going to come in judgment, but if you'll repent, I will offer you forgiveness. And Jehoiakim throws it in the fire. But guess what?

God brings his word back with a little special message for Jehoiakim and anybody else that would take away his word. This is the repeated pattern in Scripture. Josiah, their generation loses the word, but then they find it. You come to the New Testament and there had been any prophet for 400 years, and John is now suddenly prophesying, and Jesus, the word of God is out healing and speaking, and he commissions his disciples to Out and write the word of God and he says the Holy Spirit's going to come and he's going to cause you to have perfect recall.

He's going to bring everything back to remembrance. He's going to guide you into all truth. And these guys start writing the scriptures and the scriptures are starting to disseminate and people are trying to destroy the word of God. All these Roman emperors are trying to kill Christians and destroy their copies of the word, but it keeps going and it keeps going.

And then even you have human mistakes like Jerome, who is a great guy, but he makes this little man's translation mistake and you have this huge darkness that envelops the church. But what, the gates of hell don't prevail. God preserved 55,600 manuscripts that are resurrected. Found during this Renaissance period and Erasmus and these other people assemble God's word and they find these mistakes and they begin to proclaim the word of God anew.

There's groups like the Waldenses who all of their copies of the Bible are burned, and yet they recite it all back to the community, and they preserve God's word. What will we do in our generation? The devil is always about trying to destroy God's word because it is powerful. The world is always about trying to destroy God's word, and there is a part of our own hearts that tries to suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

But we, by God's decree, have a duty to preserve God's word in our generation. What will you do to make sure that you're not suppressing the truth in unrighteousness in your own heart? What will you do to stand up for the truth of God's written word against people that are attacking it and trying to tear it down? We have a responsibility, but we have hope.

That as we stand up we're not by ourselves. We've got the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and all of redemptive history behind us and future that guarantees our victory and so we can go out in hope and pass that baton to the next generation. Nevertheless, we do have a duty in our generation. Theoretically, it is possible for us to be like the generations before Josiah, and the word could get lost.

We could lose things like Jerome did. We could miss the mark like other people did. And so by God's grace, let us pray that we will fulfill our duty and our generation to preserve the Word of God, understanding that it is preserved forever in heaven, and that we will see His kingdom continue to spread throughout the earth, that he may be glorified, and that more and more souls will go to heaven. Amen.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this morning that we can talk about your word preserved forever in heaven. And we thank you that you have promised that not one jot or tittle will fall until all is fulfilled. And we accept this duty that you have given to us, this mantle, this, this responsibility, and we pray, Father, that by your power and your spirit that you would help us fulfill this duty in our generation, to preserve it, to preserve the word in our own hearts, to preserve it in our homes, Lord, to preach the word faithfully from this pulpit.

We pray God that you would raise up more and more men and women that can stand for truth against the onslaught of attack. We pray that each of us would have a good handle on the evidence that is out there and not just shoulder the burden of proof from people that haven't really thought through these issues, but that we graciously help them see that there are arguments that support our faith. Thank you, Lord, for this time that we can talk about these things. Help us to go out this week in boldness, filled with your spirit that we may proclaim your word.

In Christ's name we pray, and all God's people said, Amen.