Bible this morning to 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16. This will be the second in a series of messages dealing with the subject of the doctrine of the Scriptures. In message number one we dealt with the titles given to the Bible, and they were the Bible, the Scriptures, the Old and the New Testaments, and the Word of God. This morning we want to deal with the subject of the inspiration of the Bible. Is it trustworthy? Is it a collection of the ideas originated in the minds of men? Or is it the mind of God conveyed through the instruments of men so that we have God actually speaking to us? This is a very important doctrine for today's church. And it involves whether or not we have a trustworthy Bible or whether that it is just a collection of fables containing some truths and some errors. Reading from 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. for recruit, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Now in the first message we saw that the word Bible means book. It comes from the Greek word biblos meaning book, a very basic meaning. The Bible is a book. It is also called the Old and the New Testaments. which we found out last week can better be understood rather than testament as covenants the old and the new covenants the old testament scriptures dealing primarily with God's covenantal relation with his people Israel and the new testament scriptures dealing with his covenantal people the church of the Lord Jesus Christ The Bible is also referred to as the Scripture, singular, and the Scriptures, meaning holy writings, as the term Scripture expresses. But the most significant and complete of all the names given to the Bible is called the Word of God. Internally, it is spoken of again and again as God's Word. it being the spoken word of God to men, so that we have revealed to us the mind and the will of our very Creator himself. Now today we wish to deal with this term inspiration. What does it mean? Paul states that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. And we believe that this is the preferable translation in our authorized version. I personally reject at this stage the translation in the revised version. The revised version was that which came about through the National Council of Churches. One of the reasons that I don't use the revised version is that before you can quote from it, you have to get permission from the National Council of Churches, and I refuse to quote from a Bible that I've got to write off to get permission to quote from it. It's copyrighted, and if you have a copy of the revised version, look inside it, and you'll see the whole thing's copyrighted, and if you're going to write a book, you can't quote from the revised standard version without getting permission from the National Council of Churches. But the way they translate this passage is that all Scripture inspired by God is profitable for doctrine. Now that's not the same thing as saying all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Because it implies that you then have to determine which Scripture may be inspired of God and which Scripture may not be inspired by God. And that is then left upon the subjective experience of every individual that comes along. But I believe the truth of the matter is that all scripture, as Paul in his day was writing all of the Old Testament scriptures, for there was no New Testament at that time, is given by inspiration of God and it can be trusted. It is for doctrine, it is for reprieve, it's for correction, it's for instruction in righteousness. So it is a trustworthy thing. Now the word inspired that Paul uses here is composed of two Greek words and literally means God breathe. One word God, the other breathe. And what the passage is saying, all scripture is God breathed. Now what does that denote? The scriptures are the result of the divine in breathing. Just as human speech is uttered by the breathing through a person's mouth. As I am speaking to you today, I am breathing. and out of my mouth comes forth breath and words at the same time. The Bible that we have before us is the God-breathed book. It is the spoken word which has come forth from the mouth or the breath of God himself. Inspiration, we then define, is a strong conscious in breathing of God into men, qualifying them to give utterance to truth. It is God speaking through men, and the Bible is therefore just as much the word of God as though God spoke every word with his own lips. Now it's interesting that if you look at the term breathe in the New Testament, You find that there is a word that means to breathe gently. That is not the word that is used here. Instead, this term in Timothy denotes a forcible breathing, with much force behind it, and denotes a conscious breathing, not an unconscious breathing. So that God then breathes in through men his spoken word. So that the words which the writers of scripture penned become the God-breathed, or the God-moved-upon words, and become his very word for us. Turn with me to the book of 2 Peter to illustrate this, the first chapter. 2 Peter 1, and beginning in verse 19, Peter says, We have also a more sure word of prophecy, Whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place. until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. Now note carefully, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the what? by the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit. Now this passage is quite often misapplied and, I believe, misinterpreted in its primary meaning. It is usually, in many cases, defined as this in verse 20. It is held, and particularly by the Roman Church, which does not desire its members to have full access unto the scriptures, that nobody can really understand the Bible, that nobody has any right to privately interpret the Bible for their own. That should be left up to the clergy, those who are gifted, and they will tell you the meaning of the Bible. And so it is said that this passage means that, particularly it's used in discussions among Christians when they don't agree with one another, and somebody will say, well that's your opinion, and you know what the Bible says, don't have any private interpretation, and that's your private interpretation. That's what you want it to mean. But folks, that's not what the passage is saying here at all. The passage is not talking about the receivers of the Bible having the right or the ability to interpret it. The passage is saying that the Bible originated not with men sitting around campfires giving their private understandings of God. But the Bible came about as the Holy Spirit moved upon men so that what they wrote was the spoken word of God. In other words, the Bible is not some private opinion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Bible did not come to us through somebody giving us their personal opinion about God. But the Bible came to us as the Holy Spirit moved upon, and that's in the passive tense. That is, it denotes that the recipients, the holy men, were passive, and the Holy Spirit came upon them, and so breathed upon them that what they wrote became the spoken word of God, the sure word of prophecy. Now I'm glad that we can look to that. I'm glad that when I preach and when I read for my personal devotion that I don't have to sit here and try to determine whether or not this portion of the Bible is really God saying something to me or whether it's just somebody who wrote something 2,000 or 3,000 years ago giving me their personal interpretation of what God is like. No, wherever we read the Bible, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. It came to us as God breathed upon holy men of old, so that they recorded the spoken word of God to them, and it became the holy scriptures unto us, God's voice unto us. Now, this declaration of Peter here then states that the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost was especially and miraculously present with and in the writers of the scriptures, revealing to them some truths which they did not know beforehand, and other scriptures or other truths which they were already aware of. but that through the work of the Holy Spirit that he so superintended what God would have, that what they wrote became the very living, authoritative word of God, and thereby is dependable and trustworthy for our consideration. So we may summarize then, the inspiration of the Bible is this, that holy men of God, qualified by the infusion of the breath of God, wrote in obedience to his divine command, and were kept from error. whether that it was dealing with truths with which they were already familiar or of which they were unfamiliar. And in this sense, all scripture is given by inspiration of God so that I declare to you that the Bible which we have is the very word of the living God and they are of divine origin and authority. Now then, having stated that, it is important that we see some distinctions when we deal with the term inspiration. What do we mean by inspiration and how is it distinguished from other considerations related to it? Well, first, we must distinguish the inspiration of the Bible from what is referred to as verbatim reporting. Now, this view, which attempts to honor the Bible states that God's Spirit came upon the writers of the scripture, and that he used them in the same way that you would use a computer or a typewriter. And that they were unconscious of what they were writing, and that they that God totally bypassed their individual characteristics, their writing styles and everything, and that God mechanically dictated each word of the Bible because the writers became machines during the time that the Holy Spirit came upon them. I do not believe that's the truth of the Word of God. I believe that God spirit moved upon men, and that they wrote what became the word of God. But that God used varying personalities, varying writing styles, used even their oddities, and what we might call some idiosyncrasies of the various writers. We see personalities coming through in the books of the Bible. We don't see one mechanical book. Instead we see an Apostle Paul and his style of writing and reasoning. And then we see Peter, a different approach. So that whatever the inspiration is, it is not God just using these men as inanimate machines. just to type out through them what he would have. No, we see their very personalities, their minds, and their very beings coming through to us in the books which God has given unto us. So we do not mean by inspiration. Mechanical dictation or verbatim reporting. There's something about a computer is that you can feed a bunch of information into a computer and then hit your printout. and you'll get out what you put into it. But that computer will be totally unaffected by it. It will not be affected. It's a machine. It's not a personality. And some may debate that if you use those things very long, whether that it's a personality or a machine, because some of them can take on some unusual characteristics. But you can put into a computer and press the button, you'll get out a mechanical readout, but that computer is totally unaware, or unmoved rather, by what went through it. Now some understand the inspiration of the Bible, that's what God did with Peter, he did with Paul, he did with David, is that David was put into some type of a trance, and God just mechanically put the words into David's mouth and David pinned them down so that David became much like an inanimate machine in order for God to get his truth out of David. I do not believe that's what the Bible means by inspiration. Now the second distinction that we need to make is between inspiration and revelation. Inspiration and revelation. If you read your Bible you find two different kinds of records of truths recorded in the Bible. That which is first divinely revealed and could not have been known by the writer unless God let them know it. You find that set of facts in the Bible. And then you find a second set of biblical truths, and that is a set of records or facts which the men of the Bible already knew before the Holy Spirit moved upon them to record this. Now let's illustrate this. For example, in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, which we believe were written and penned by Moses, according to Jesus' words anyway, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. Now they won't teach you that in the seminary today. They'll teach you that J.P. and E. is the one, unknown editors, wrote the first five books of the Bible, but Jesus says that Moses wrote them. And he quotes from Moses and refers to Moses several times. But how would Moses have known about the creation account? unless God revealed it unto him. For Moses was not there. Nobody was there when God said in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. And that in the beginning God created all things. There was no newspaper man or newspaper woman there to record this event. Nobody could know how the world came into being as described in the first two chapters of Genesis without God giving a divine revelation unto them. But then there's a second group of Bible facts. Moses did not have to have a divine revelation from God to record the deliverance of the nation of Israel from Egypt. He was an eyewitness of that. So when it came time later for God to inspire Moses, and God breathed upon Moses, God revealed to Moses through divine revelation things which he could not know without a revelation from God. But he also used Moses' first hand understanding of many of the historical events which Moses had gone through. And by inspiration we mean the superintending work of the Holy Spirit, guiding things which were divinely revealed and that which were humanly observed, that the outcome became the very truth that God would have us to have. So by inspiration we don't mean the same thing as revelation. Revelation is God making something known or man making something known unto us. By inspiration we mean the Holy Spirit taking that which either God makes known or man have observed and writing that which God would have permanently recorded for us. Revelation discovers new truths. But inspiration superintends or governs the communication of that truth. Did you know that the Bible says that there were many things which Paul talks about? He was caught up in the third heaven. There were many things which he saw there which were not lawful to be uttered. Do you know the Bible hasn't told us everything? Do you know that? Many mysteries which God has not seen best to reveal unto us. And folks, men will never know them unless God is pleased to make them known. For that's the only way that God can be known is when God is pleased to reveal himself. No man can, by searching, find out God. And incidentally, that's the same way a person comes to know the Lord Jesus Christ by a divine revelation. It's not by some act of flesh and blood instructing a person how to become a Christian. If you are a true Christian this morning, or have any hopes of ever becoming one, it's going to take nothing less than a supernatural, divine revelation of God to your soul, revealing Jesus Christ and his glory unto you. That has to take place. It's something that I as the minister cannot bring about. And that's why here at Oakland Baptist Church we do not and will not use the present-day high-pressure psychological methods to try to get people to make professions of faith when they are unwilling or do not know what they are called upon to do. Oh, away with this idea that you can preach a ten-minute sermonette and then call for a thirty-minute appeal to come to Christ. Who in the world knows what they're doing? But I tell you, if God makes himself known to you, Brother Jim, you'll come to Christ. Oh, when you come, you'll come willingly, you'll come freely, and it won't be because some preacher has persuaded you. It will be the work of the Holy Spirit making Christ real and known unto you where he becomes your Lord and your Savior. And if that's the kind of salvation experience you have, then it won't be some preacher or some event coming on later along that may persuade you that what happened to you wasn't true. No, when God reveals something, it will have an effect in the soul. I've used the crude illustration several times here in this book. that when I was a younger man, I had a desire at one time to be a hermit and to live in caves and to hunt and fish, and that's all I wanted to do. I didn't want to be around civilization. I just wanted to live out and be a mountain man. Boy, that was a glorious thought, not having any problems with people and just be able to live your own life, be your own boss and so forth. There was a glory in that. That lasted until this woman came along right over here to my right. And when she came by that day, the glory of living in a cave soon subsided, and I saw a greater glory. It wasn't that I didn't see any glory of being a hermit anymore, it's just I saw a greater glory. Now folks, that's what happens when God reveals Christ to a lost sinner. They're in love with the glory of this present world. And nothing can get them to turn from that. I can stand and plead and plead and plead and plead for dead men to believe. And that is my responsibility. I'm to stand in the midst of a graveyard, a cemetery. and call for dead bones to live, and yet I can't make a one of them live. But I tell you, when God is pleased to blow, to breathe life into those people dead in trespasses and sin, when that life is in breathe, oh, they come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And they come willingly, they come freely, and they don't have to be high pressured. They don't have to have some type of manipulation put upon them. They come, and they come freely. And folks, that's the way we got our Bible. God didn't have to hemlock or to put some type of a wrestling hold on David to get him to write the Bible. The Holy Spirit came upon David, and David spoke willingly and freely as to what God would have him do. And that's why I didn't please God through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. I had a minister tell me one time, well, preacher, if I believed that, I don't believe I'd preach anymore. And he said, why do you preach if you don't think you can save anybody? And I said simply this, because God's commanded me to preach. God's commanded me to preach. That's the reason. And it pleased God that while the proclamation of the word goes forth, he's pleased to breathe life. I can't breathe the life. All I can do is proclaim the light. And when God is pleased to give eyes to see the light, then there's where the harmony of this thing all comes together. So you see, I have to preach to individuals who are dead, people who are blind, people who cannot see. Now how in the world am I going to manipulate people like that? How am I going to get Lazarus to come out of the tomb? I can't do so. But I am commanded to call, Lazarus come forth. And when Lazarus has come forth, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. And it's not something to be attributed to the preacher, or to his skill, or his cleverness. God gets the glory this way. And the same way with the way we got our Bible. God has been pleased to breathe upon holy men of old, to reveal to them some things which they could never have known otherwise, and to take things which they have had known unto them, and to write these things down so that what we have is the trustworthy, holy scriptures of God. Now then, though this be the case, it needs to be understood carefully that, now listen and don't misunderstand me, not everything that is recorded in the Bible is to be taken as instructions for our ethical conduct. Now listen to me carefully in this. There are things recorded in the Bible by God's Spirit that are to be shunned and not copied. For example, though all Scripture is inspired equally, yet not everything that is said in the Scripture carries the same weight of authority. For example, in the book of Job, We find the words of God recorded there by the Holy Spirit. But we also find the words of Satan recorded there by the same Holy Spirit. We also find the words of Job recorded there, and we find the words of Job's three counselors recorded there. All of this information that is recorded in the book of Job is inspired But you do not go and take the words of Satan and make them the ethical conduct that you are to perform. You do not listen to Job and everything that Job says. Job said some things in that book which were not true to the character of God. Job's three friends said some things in that book which were not true to the character of God. So when we find things recorded in the Bible, and though they be inspired as being recorded as true, not everything that is found in the Bible is to be imitated and copied and sought out after. For example, the Bible tells us of David, a man after God's own heart, that he committed the crimes of murder and adultery. Shall we then go and do likewise? Of course not. For the Bible tells us that when he sent Nathan the prophet unto David, that the thing which David did displeased the Lord. That's what the Bible says. And there are also accounts of David's extreme cruelty in his dealing with the Ammonites in the Bible. and his mutilating the bodies of those beings, of that race of mankind. Now just because the Holy Spirit inspired what David did to the Ammonites does not imply that God approved of what he did any more than he approved of his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah the Hittite. So not everything you find within the Bible is to be practiced. Read carefully. But everything that you find in the Bible is true. It may be Satan's statements. He comes to Christ in the temptations in the wilderness and he says, if God has said this, then do this. Turn these stones into bread. And Satan twisted scripture. And we do not follow the words of Satan, but God inspired the writers of the Bible to record what Satan stated. Many things recorded in the Bible came to pass and are historically true, but they're not to be copied and followed after in the life of the believer. And only reading of that can evidently reveal that unto us. Now then, finally, let's look at the distinction between inspiration and illumination. Inspiration and illumination. I remember when I was a boy growing up in church, why it was a common statement around the country church that when the preacher got all good and lathered up and he really got the preaching good, why it was stated that old brother so and so sure got inspired yesterday, didn't he? Now that's not what we mean by the inspiration of the Bible. Men do not get inspired in that sense, and that's the way we got our Bible. If we want to use the term inspiration carefully, we should not say of any minister that he is inspired. Why? Because no minister or interpreter of the Bible is infallible. So I am not inspired in the same sense that Paul and Peter and James and the writers of the Bible were inspired. But the Bible does talk about illumination and that no man can understand the spiritual things of God unless the Holy Spirit takes those things and reveals them unto men. That's illumination. We read in 2 Corinthians 2, verse 14, that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness unto them, because they are spiritually discerned. You cannot understand the spiritual things of God unless the Spirit interprets them to you through the teaching of the scripture. This is illumination. It is the work of God upon the mind of a human being. Flesh and blood cannot reveal God unto men. Men must be illuminated. They must have their understanding, their capacity to understand opened up before the spiritual things of God can be discerned. But there is a big difference between a divine revelation of the mind of God and a divine action upon my mind. And some hold that all inspiration is, is just God acting and illuminating the writers of the Bible the same way he acts upon all Christians. Folks, that's not the case. If that be true today, if illumination is the same as inspiration, then I should be able to write another Bible. See the difference? If I am illuminated and you are illuminated by the Spirit of God to see Christ and to understand the Bible, if that's all God did when he inspired the Bible, then we ought to be able to have continued new books of the Bible added to the present books. But that's not the case. God is no longer inspiring writings of the Scriptures. He has finished the canon through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And now we have the Old Testament and the New Testament Scriptures before us. And we have no more continuing mind of God revealing new things. And I would caution any of my viewers this morning from embracing a teacher or a book or whatever which says that there's been some new thing revealed. unto that person. No, God has finished revealing new things in the pages of the Bible. And what he takes is the Holy Spirit takes the things which are recorded in the inscripturated Bible and he opens the understanding so that they might be able to understand the things that are in the Bible. But no new thing is being revealed unto men today. I remember I was in my living room and a former pastor, a fellow came by one day and knocked on the door and introduced himself. I'd never seen him before. He came in, we talked with him a little while, but he said God had sent him down there to deliver a message to me. He'd come about 60 miles. I said, what is that message? He said, God said that you're not preaching on hell enough. And you need to start preaching on the doctrine of hell. And I said, that's strange. I've just completed ten consecutive messages on Sunday morning on that one subject. And he said, well, I just know that that's what God told me to come down here and tell you. And he said this. He said, I have just returned from walking among the planets. And I have walked in the steps of Jesus from one planet unto another, and God has now sent me back here to earth to tell you a message that he would have you to have. I introduced you to the door right away after that. God no longer talks to people like that now that he has completed the canon of so that I don't have to be all carried away with some mystical personality who claims that God speaks to them in some way He doesn't speak to anybody else. No, if I want to know what God would have me to do, all I have to do is go to his books from heaven, for here is what he has given unto me, and ask for the ministry of the Holy Spirit to help me understand what God would have for my life. Do I need to know how to be saved? I can go to this book and say, Oh, God, I'm lost. I need understanding from your word. Illuminate my eyes and help me to behold wondrous things out of thy law. No, illumination is not the same as inspiration. Inspiration is not the same as revelation. Inspiration is not the same as mechanical dictation. Inspiration and conclusion is God breathing upon men His words so that they take those words and record them for us for a record that He's given to us of His Son. And this is the record that you believe on Him whom God has sent. Now if God has gone through all of this trouble, through all of this work, to give us the Bible over a period of 1,600 years by some 40 different authors, so as to bring about it in harmonious truth the record of His Son, then I'm authorized to call upon all of my hearers today is to turn from self and the law of this present world and turn to the Son and the record that God has given to us of Him. Will you come today? Will you believe in Him today? Even today? Trust Him as Lord and Savior. Do you believe you can trust what God has said of His Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life? Can you trust that record? It is trustworthy. It didn't come from somebody back there 3,000 years ago around some campfire and said, well, this is what I think God is like. What do you think God is like? No, it came from God. This is a trustworthy record. Heavenly Father, we pray that you take your word and apply it to our lives today. We thank you for a trustworthy Bible so that we can know your mind and your will for our lives. May the Spirit of divine illumination take the things of Christ and reveal them unto us even this day. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.