We're going to turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3 and the verse 16. And my subject tonight is the Bible, a most remarkable book. Now I won't speak as long as I have been speaking to you previously on Sunday past. The message was a bit longer because it had to be interpreted. Last night I had a special message that required a lot of time to deliver and I'll do my best to be a lot more brief. I'll be guided by that clock and I'll do my best to be a lot more brief. Verse 16 of 2 Timothy chapter 3 says, All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." My subject, the Bible, a most remarkable book. The Scottish author Sir Walter Scott on his deathbed, with 20,000 books in his library, asked his friend Lockhart to read to him from the book. Lockhart asked him What book would you like? And Sir Walter replied, Need you ask? There is but one. William York Gladstone was one of England's greatest Prime Ministers and he said he had known 95 great men and 87 of them were followers of the Bible. Queen Victoria, England's longest reigning sovereign, said that the secret of England's greatness was the open Bible. The novelist Charles Dickens said, It is the best book that ever was or ever will be in the world. Dr William Phelps, who was once the principal of Yale University, said, I believe that a knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without a knowledge of the Bible. Each year approximately 45 million Bibles are sold and 35 million are given away. So around 80 million Bibles are distributed every year. The Bible is available at least in one book if not the whole of the Bible, in almost 2,000 of the world's 6,170 separate languages. In 1990, the Gideons gave President George Bush Senior their 500 millionth free copy of the Bible. The word Bible comes from the Greek word Biblos, which means book. And of course we can say the Bible is the book. It's the book of books. There is no book to compare with the Bible. Many people today, this night in Singapore, are heading out to celebrate the end of this year and the dawn of a new year. But you know we have something better. and all their celebrations. We have the book. We have the book of books. We have the most remarkable book in the world. It is the Bible. It is remarkable because it is an inspired book. We read in our text, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, or we might say, as the original, all scripture is God-breathed. And we read in 2nd Peter 1 verse 21 that Holy men of God speak as they were moved or as they were borne along by the Holy Ghost. This is a tremendous thing. God has given us a book that he has inspired. Now, inspiration is not what we call mechanical. It's not that the men who wrote the books of the Bible were like robots, like machines that were programmed to speak in a certain way. God made use of the different styles and abilities of the authors. For example, Paul's writing is very different from Peter's writing. You notice a different style. Moses does not write in the way that David writes. David doesn't even write in the same way as his son Solomon writes. You read the Psalms of David and your heart is drawn out in devotion. And how you love to memorize those Psalms, especially the 23rd Psalm, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. And you go right through until you come. To yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy Lord and thy staff, they comfort me. How glorious to conclude, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. The writings of David are different from those of Solomon. We have three books by Solomon, his Proverbs, short pithy sayings, inspired statements that teach us many practical lessons. We have the gloomy book of Ecclesiastes that actually has appealed to atheists in their time, and then we have that beautiful Psalm of Solomon that really describes the relationship between Christ and his bride, the church. Then we find that the prophecy of Isaiah is very different from that of Jeremiah. God breathed his life into those men. He breathed his word into their hearts. They were carried along by the Holy Ghost and God made use of their individual styles. I like to illustrate it from an Irish flautist, a famous Irish flautist called James Galway. We do actually produce some famous people in Ireland and James Galway is one of those famous people. He's brilliant with the flute, but I'm sure that James Galway could play many different wind instruments. He would be competent on the oboe, the clarinet, the trumpet, as well as the flute and other wind instruments. You imagine James Galway playing different musical compositions by different composers from different centuries. His breath goes into the instrument. There's a different tune being played in one from the other. And yet he plays the notes perfectly, without a mistake. He puts the breath in at exactly the right time. You see, it's a different style there in the flute from the oboe and from the clarinet and the trumpet. It sounds different. It's a different tune that's being played, a different composition. But it is all so beautiful and all so brilliant. One man's breath And yet look at the variety that is produced by one man's breath. That's a little illustration of what we have in this most remarkable book. Here is a book that is God-breathed. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. The Holy Spirit guided the thoughts of the writers and they wrote exactly what He wanted them to write. And that is what we call verbal. inspiration. The word verbal has to do with the word word itself. It comes from a Latin word which means word. And every word is inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. We don't simply have an inspiration of ideas, we have an inspiration of words. And that extends, and I noted this with you last night, to letters and little distinguishing marks or strokes. We find the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabets, and the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of it in Matthew chapter 5. He says, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, that represents the Hebrew letter, the smallest Hebrew letter, or one tittle, that represents a little stroke. that distinguishes one Hebrew letter from another. And I won't go into it, but you have the letter Beth at the beginning of verse 9 in Psalm 119. You have the letter Kath at the beginning of verse 81. And just down at the bottom right-hand corner, if you have very good eyesight or a good magnifying glass, you'll see that the letter Beth is more square than the letter Kath. And that little squareness there is because there's a little extension at the bottom right hand corner of the letter Beth, and that makes it a Beth rather than a Cath. And you have the same idea with Daleth and Resh verses 25 and 153. That's at the beginning of those sections. The Lord Jesus himself believed in verbal inspiration. By using that expression, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till it all be fulfilled. And he also said in John 10 verse 35, the scripture cannot be broken. Now here is a puzzle for us. We may find it strange that the writers were infallibly guided, acting freely, using their own personalities and styles, and yet they could not make a mistake. The Holy Spirit directed them in such a way that while the ideas seemed to have been theirs and they were acting freely and writing freely, they were guided infallibly so that they did not make any mistakes and they wrote exactly what God wanted them to write. We might find that odd. But it's no more strange than what we read in Acts chapter 2 and verse 23. And that concerns the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. There we are told that Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. You see, in that verse we are told that the work of Christ was a predetermined work. It was foreordained. And it exactly happened as God had foreordained and predetermined. And yet, when Peter is speaking to those Jews, he says, by wicked hands, you have taken him, you have slain him, you are guilty because you acted freely. Nobody compelled you. to cry out away with him, let him be crucified. No one compelled Pontius Pilate to give sentence against Christ. In fact, his wife warned him against doing it. She said, I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. Have thou nothing to do with that just person? He was warned not to do it. He acted freely. The soldiers who parted the garments of Christ and cast lots for his vesture, they acted freely and yet all of that had been specifically foreordained by God and it is recorded a thousand years earlier in Psalm 22. The things that befell Christ are recorded in Isaiah 53, 700 years before the coming of Christ. Those people acted freely and yet God had foreordained and predetermined everything that should happen concerning his son when Jesus Christ came into this world. So if that's the puzzle that we read in Acts 2 and verse 23, it's the same type of conundrum as we have in regard to verbal inspiration. We believe it with all of our hearts. We believe that those writers used their styles and their vocabulary and God directed their thoughts and their ideas and their words and every letter that they included in their writings. And that tells us again that the Bible is a most remarkable book. I want to think with you now in the second place as to how this remarkable book was composed. How did we get this remarkable book? We speak of the canon of scripture, and a canon was really a measuring line or a measuring weight. It was to determine the boundaries of a weight, how much value you give in weight, how much land you're measuring out, that you don't go into your neighbour's property, take some land that doesn't belong to you, you measured it by the line, you got it right, And that was the canon. You've got the exact amount, you haven't got any more, you haven't got any less. That's the word that is used for the books we have in the Bible. The canon of Holy Scripture. What books should be included? We say 66 books. 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New. The Old Testament is very straightforward. Because in Romans chapter 3 in the verses 1 and 2, we find that the oracles of God were committed to the Jews. The Old Testament words, the Old Testament books were under the care of the Jews. So they recognized the same books as we recognize. They had the prophets of God, the priests of God, they had God's temple, God's sacrifices, God's kings, And they had the scriptures of the Old Testament. And they were recognized as authoritative. The Lord Jesus Christ, He recognized all the books that we have in the Old Testament. Now they had 22 books, we have 39. And you say, how can that be? If Christ recognized the books we use, and they had just 22 books, we have 39. There's a simple solution. They put certain books together into a group and they counted that as one. The minor prophets, we count them as 12 books, from Hosea to Malachi, that was one book to them. So you've immediately reduced the number by 11. Jeremiah and Lamentations were grouped together as one book, and certain others as well, so that they compressed them, we might say, in number to 22, but their 22 are the exact same books as our 39 books. The Lord Jesus never quoted from what's called the Apocrypha. That's a section of books in the Roman Catholic Bible that was just recognized in the 16th century at the Council of Trent and the Jews did not recognize the Apocrypha. So the Old Testament is the Old Testament that we have in our Protestant Bibles. Much of the New Testament, we have 27 books there, was recognized early on. For example, Peter recognised the writings of Paul as authoritative scripture in 2 Peter 3 verses 15 and 16. John, in writing in his gospel, tells us that there were many other signs that were wrought by Jesus, but he said, these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name. So I can see there John recognised his gospel as being inspired scripture. What were the criteria for recognising the New Testament books? They had to be written or authorised by an apostle. They had to be acknowledged and used from the earliest times by Christians. The New Testament books were to honour Christ and they were to contain nothing that was false or contrary to the teachings of the Word of God. Fourteen of the epistles, or fourteen of the books of the New Testament, were written by the Apostle Paul. So we have no problem with the authenticity of the 14 books composed by Paul. That includes Hebrews, because I believe he wrote Hebrews. Matthew and John are two of the Gospels written by Apostles. 1st and 2nd Peter written by Peter the Apostle. 1st, 2nd and 3rd John in Revelation written by the Apostle John. Luke wrote the book of Luke and Acts and he was a companion of the Apostle Paul. There is no doubt as to the authenticity of that gospel. And Mark is believed to have been a companion of the Apostle Peter. And that brings us up to 25 books that we have no problem with. We're left with just two. James and Jude. There is a difficulty as to know who these two men were. Were they two of the apostles, James the less and Judas not Iscariot as the Bible calls him? Or were they the two half-brothers? of Jesus Christ. I think it is more widely believed that they were the two half-brothers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Martin Luther, I may say, had something of a difficulty with the epistle of James. Because he misunderstood James, he thought that James was a straw epistle, or an epistle of straw. And for some time he didn't recognize it. You see, Martin Luther thought that James was teaching salvation by works. But if you understand James alright, he's not teaching anything contrary to justification by faith. He is simply saying That the evidence of justification by faith is the life that you live, the works that you perform. He's not saying works save you, he's saying the evidence of salvation is your life. How you live, how you serve God, how you walk with God. And I believe that Luther later on changed his mind and did recognize that James was authentic. and by the year AD 367, Athanasius who was a great defender of the Trinity, recognised the 27 books that we have in our New Testament. They were recognised by Jerome and by Augustine of Hippo. The Synod of Hippo in 393 AD ratified the 27 books that we have in the New Testament, and the 8th Council of Carthage recognised these 27 books in 397 AD. So, little by little, the Church We're talking here about the Evangelical Church came to recognize that in addition to the 39 books that we have in the Old Testament, there are 27 authentic books in the New Testament. Our former moderator, Dr. Paisley, wrote a very interesting little book called Christian Foundations. Very well written. And he has seven reasons why I believe in different things. Seven reasons why I believe in the virgin birth of Christ. And he has a chapter on seven reasons why I believe the Bible is the word of God. And in that book, he takes the prophecy of Isaiah, with its sixty-six chapters, And he seeks to show that the 66 chapters of Isaiah are in many ways parallel to the 66 books of the Bible. Now here I must say that we do not believe that the chapter divisions and the verse divisions in the Bible are inspired. That was added much, much later. But they are very good in many cases. There are a few chapter divisions we might not feel were very well made, but the vast majority are quite excellent. And I would say if any of us were asked to divide the Bible, if we hadn't seen the present chapters, if we were handed a Bible with just the books there and told to divide it into chapters and verses for easy reference, we wouldn't do a fraction of the worth of a job that was done. The chapter divisions are generally quite excellent. And I believe that the Lord has blessed us in having our chapter and verse divisions. And Dr. Paisley parallels the work of Isaiah, the 66 chapters of Isaiah, to the 66 books of the Bible. And isn't it amazing? Isaiah falls neatly into two main sections. The first section ends at the end of chapter 39. And remember, we have 39 books in the Old Testament. And the next section, beginning at 46, extends through to chapter 66, and it parallels to our New Testament. In fact, the difference between the two sections is so marked that Modernistic scholars, that we don't agree with in any way, said there were two Isaiahs. They said there was Isaiah, who wrote the first 39 chapters, and then there was what they called a deutero, or a second Isaiah, and his work began at chapter 40. Incidentally, some of them think there was what they called a treto, or a third Isaiah, but I won't go down that road. They said, to Isaias, because the difference in tone in the second section of Isaiah was so marked. And isn't it interesting as well? Chapter 40 of Isaiah introduces us to the prophecy of John the Baptist. John the Baptist is the one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. John the Baptist was a forerunner of Christ. He's introduced to us in what we might call Isaiah's New Testament. And the Lord Jesus Christ, the coming of our God amongst us, is clearly indicated in Isaiah 40. See, a marked change of tone. And then an interesting thing. I know Dr. Paisley likes to go into certain things in a unique way. He said if we go into Isaiah's New Testament, In the 27 books, or 27 chapters, the central chapter between chapter 40 and chapter 66 is chapter 53. And what is chapter 53 of Isaiah all about? It's all about the cross of Christ. It says, he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. He was numbered with the transgressors, he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his day, He made intercession for the transgressors. It's all about the cross work of Christ. And it even deals with the resurrection of Christ. For it says, he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many. And how is that done? Well, he'll not see of the travail of his soul if he doesn't rise. So it indicates his death. It indicates his rejection. It indicates his resurrection. Christ is central. The cross is central in that chapter. And what is the central theme of the New Testament? It is the cross of Christ. The Apostle Paul said, we preach Christ crucified. It's a central theme of the New Testament. How wonderful it is. You know, the 66 books of the Bible are deeply embedded in the consciousness of Christians. The great Baptist preacher, C. H. Urgin, loved the Pilgrim's Progress. He read it through over a hundred times, but I tell you this, he never put it on a par with the Bible. Never. His love was for the Word of God. There's no book to compare with the Bible. Our brother Boone called it unique. It's unique. It is remarkable. And it's called in Acts chapter 7, the lively or living oracle. That's because it's alive. There was an old preacher one time. God saved him from a life of shame. And when he held an open air meeting, he would place his Bible on the ground. He'd place his coat over it. Now I don't believe in placing the Bible on the ground. And I don't believe you should set anything on top of the Bible. I learnt that from Dr Paisley too. But he said this old preacher would place the Bible on the ground and he would put a coat over it and then he started to jump round it and he would say, it's alive, it's alive! And the people came running. And they wanted to know, they thought there was something about to move under the coat. And then when he gathered a crowd He picked up his coat and he picked up his Bible and he said, it's alive. And it is. It speaks to us. Many times when preachers have preached from the Bible, God has spoken to the congregation. I can remember one occasion where a young woman from our church in Kilkeen, where I was minister, brought her boyfriend along to the service. And he wasn't a converted person, he was unsaved. And I preached the straightforward gospel message. And the girl told me afterwards that her boyfriend accused her of going to me and telling me all about him. And that I was preaching all about him in the church because she had told me all about him. I didn't know him from Adam. I wasn't saying anything particularly about him, but because this is a living book. He was being spoken to from the Bible. God was speaking to him from his precious holy word. Now you would expect a book like this to be preserved. Our Queen's crown jewels are very carefully guarded in the Tower of London and you might end up staying in the Tower if you tried to steal them. This is a far more valuable thing than the crown jewels. And the Bible is a preserved book. Christ said, and these are words that are preserved three times over. There's only one verse that I know of in the Bible that is identical in three different places. And that is the verse where the Lord Jesus Christ said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. You'll find that in Matthew 24, 35, Mark 13, 31, Luke 21, 33. And God has taken great care of His Word. I showed you last night how many manuscripts we have. 25,000 manuscripts, 5,600 Greek manuscripts. Then the Bible translated into the Coptic Egyptian language, translated into Latin, and translated also into Syriac, the Syrian language. And in all, we have 25,000 manuscripts. Far more than for any other comparable period Dr. F.F. Bruce said, and I quoted this last night, there is no body of ancient literature which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament. I mentioned last night Sir David Dalrymple and how he was able from the second and century writers to compose all of the New Testament with the exception of 11 verses. The Bible is a remarkable book. I'm almost through. I want just briefly to touch on the accuracy of the Bible. If this is God's Word, then we expect it to be accurate. There is a book called Undesigned Coincidences in the Holy Scriptures, written by a man called Professor Blunt. He has many examples of things that a person who is a forger would never think of if he was seeking to present a forged book, if he was making it up and it wasn't true. One of the things he gives us is the instance of giants in the Bible. You will read in Genesis chapter 6, there were giants in the earth in those days, and those days were the days before the flood. Then it says, and after that. So it's saying, in those days, before the flood, there were giants in the earth, and then also after that, after the flood, there were giants in the earth. The first place of giants was wiped out in the flood, and after the flood there arose another race of giants. They were seen by the twelve spies who were sent out by Moses to spy the land. They're giants. They said, we were like grasshoppers in their sight. We were like grasshoppers in our own sight. Can you imagine a grasshopper and a very tall person? My colleague in the ministry is six foot eight. and I have to look up at him and he seems to be about twice the height of everybody in the church, but he would be small beside the giants that were in the earth in those days. Then we find in Joshua chapter 11 that the sword of Joshua and his soldiers wiped out the giants at the time of the invasion, if I may use it, or the capture of Canaan by the Israelites. They slew the giants. But there were three places where the giants were not slain. One place was Gath, one place was Ashdod, and the other place was Gaza. So in Gaza, in Ashdod, and in Gath, the giants were not slain. And when we go to 1 Samuel chapter 17, we find a giant confronting the Israelite army. Where does he come from? He comes from Gath. Gath, one of the three places. A person who was forging would never have remembered what was written in Joshua chapter 11, and would not have remembered these things. You see, the Bible is so accurate. The health and sanitation laws that are given in the Bible are perfectly good. There is a law on sanitation in Deuteronomy chapter 22 or 23 verses 12 and 13. There are moral laws given and if those moral laws had been followed we wouldn't have AIDS and we wouldn't have sexually transmitted infections today. I have a book in my library by an American doctor, Dr. S. I. McMillan, called None of These Diseases, and he shows how we suffer so much because we disregard the teachings of the Bible. Now, I'm sorry if I'm rushing so fast because I was told I have a limited amount of time, and I'm almost finished, and I do apologise for rushing so fast through my message tonight. Professor Robert Dick Wilson, who was a genius, and the word genius is likely used nowadays. Most of us have no problem, we're not in any danger of becoming geniuses, but Professor Robert Dick Wilson was a genius. He knew 40 languages and dialects, and he set himself at the age of 25 to study the languages connected with the Bible, study them thoroughly, all the dialects, Then the next 15 years of his life, if God spared him, he would study the literature of the Bible, and then the last 15 years he would publish his findings. And he came to this conclusion. There is not one book, not one page of the Old Testament about which we need to have the slightest doubt. He showed that the kings that are named in the Bible are given their correct names and they appear in their correct chronological order, and he compared the work of the Bible writers with those who were contemplating with the Bible writers, the famous librarian of Alexandria, and he said that his names were wrong in many instances, he got the wrong chronological order. The Bible was written At least 2,000 years ago, between 2,000 and 3,500 years ago, when knowledge was primitive, many mistakes were made, and Professor Robert Dick Wilson was able to say, there's not a page that we need to have the slightest doubt about. The Bible's right, it's got the names right, it's got the chronology right. And may I say this as we close, if the Bible is right in all these particulars, if it is accurate to the smallest detail, we ought, as this year concludes and a new year draws nigh, we ought to pay complete attention to it. We discover in the scriptures that in the word of a king there is power. This is the word of the king. It is the word of the King of Kings, a most remarkable book. If you're not saved, it commands you to repent. It commands you to come to Christ. It invites you to Him. It tells you that if you come to Him, you will be saved. Why would you disregard such important advice? And if you're a child of God, it says to you, in the words of the Apostle Paul, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be ye not conformed to this word, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." So the Bible is saying to you, Christian, Give yourself completely to God. Prove His good, His acceptable and His perfect will. May God bless us and may He give us a taste, a relish for this most precious, remarkable book. Let's close this part with a word of prayer.