Timothy chapter 3 and verse 12. Yea, in all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, but evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 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, truly furnished unto all good works. My friends, we're continuing our studies in the doctrine of Scripture, and we're looking tonight at the inspiration of Scripture, the inspiration of Scripture, a very important doctrine that it'd be good for us to have a hold of it if we haven't heard of it or are unfamiliar with what it means. But I start off with a few questions. Why do we as Protestants make so much of the Bible? Why is it that we say the Bible should be very central to our worship? Why do we hold so tenaciously to Bible-based sermons? That's what we want. That's what we go by in the church. Why are believers exhorted to read the Bible every day? Why is it, we ask, the Bible is so special? What makes it so unique? And what makes it to stand out? We could say head and shoulders above every other book. There are millions and millions of books in the world But this one, by far, by a long way, stands out above every other book. Well, you know the answer. The answer is that this is the only book that we have in the world that is inspired by God. It's the inspired Word of God. This is God's Word. And how do we know that it is God's divinely inspired Word? Put it simply, it's because the Bible tells us so. That's our starting point really. We're not going to start tonight from a neutral position and say, and then work our way argument by argument to come to the conclusion that this is the Word of God. That's the way the world would want us to do it. But we don't start from that. We start from presuppositions. We have already beliefs in our minds as we're approaching the Scriptures. Oh, but you're just assuming, assuming that when you say the Bible is the Word of God, you approach it in this way. You're just assuming that it is the Word of God. that it's inspired of God. Well, friends, this is what the Bible says about itself, that it is the clear testimony of God. And as I said, we approach it from that presuppositional point where we believe in a God who is, and we believe in a God who has given, who speaks, a God who has given to us His Word. This is the conviction that we have about the Bible. This is a conviction that we were given when we were converted to the Lord. When we came to know the Lord, the Lord put into our hearts by His Spirit a conviction, an unshakable conviction, and firm persuasion that what we have in this book is no ordinary book, that it is a special book, and that it is the Word of God. That's something that was planted in our hearts when we became Christians. It's a gift from the Lord. I cannot explain it. Certainly, I'm sure it's your experience. I just knew. that this was God's Word when I became a Christian. The true nature of Scripture was planted, as it were, in my heart. And as we got to know the contents of the Bible, as we read it and as we heard it explained to us more and more, well, that conviction that this is God's Word only deepened. It only increased in us more and more. When we began to see the things that it teaches, we were amazed. Of course, you could look at evidences like prophecies, and the thousands of years that are separated, or hundreds of years, between certain prophecies and how it was given such a long time ago and fulfilled in precise detail hundreds of years later, well, that will confirm it as being a divine book. But there are other things, just the very teaching of the scriptures, when you read about it, you're amazed and you're brought to think, this must be God's book. For example, we can decipher from creation that God is a good God because the world is filled with good things. and God is a God of order and God is a powerful God and a wise God, we can easily detect that from looking at the world around us. But when we read the Scriptures, we read that God is a God of grace as well. And unlike other religious books which deal very superficially with sin and the problem of sin and the remedy for sin, The Bible doesn't. It deals with it head on and in a very, you could say, even logical way, in a very just way, keeping, as we know, the justice of God under one hand and maintaining God in his justice. and at the other time making a way for us to be forgiven for all our sins. And when we see that the Bible doesn't make shortcuts, it's not like other religions will just tell you God is arbitrary in his forgiveness. He�it�s up to him. You know, even the Muslim doesn�t really know whether he�s going to be forgiven until he meets Allah. And then he�s�even if he has done all the good things, he�s not sure whether he�s going to be forgiven or not. But it�s very arbitrary. But the Bible tells us in a very logical way, this is how God brought about our salvation, by providing a lamb to take away the sins of all who believe in him, and telling us that man cannot save himself. All the other religious books will tell you. You have to do something. That's the natural response of human nature, isn't it? We want to contribute. We want to earn our salvation. And all the other books, well, they just feed that human disposition. I must work for, I must be good in order to be saved. The Bible alone says you cannot. You're a sinner. You have to have God being merciful to you entirely. So there is no other book. We're persuaded of these things, and we could go on and spend a whole day, go on. But we have this, right from the very beginning, persuasion that this book is the Word of God. It sounds like circular reasoning, people say. Let it be, if that's what people think. But we can't help starting from this point. Just like with creation, we don't start trying to find out all the arguments to prove that there is a creator and he's made the world. We start with that presupposition, God is there. God is able to do anything, and we are persuaded of that. We approach creation from that viewpoint, and same with this teaching on inspiration. So we want to know, well, we know what the true nature of Scripture is, but we're asking ourselves tonight, what does the Bible itself say about this topic of inspiration. Man has his own views of the Bible, but what does God say? And I'm turning to that scripture that we read, 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16. Now, a lot of what I'm saying tonight, I'm indebted to E.J. Young and his book, Thy Word is Truth. And I'm just going to give you the bare bones of things that he said. If you haven't read that, I would heartily recommend it to you. If you want to flesh out the subject even more, that's a great place to start. But 2 Timothy 3 verse 16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Now, when we use the word inspiration today, we have a different meaning to what the way the Bible uses. We talk about a person being mentally stimulated. Inspiration is to us, oh, a person, when they're writing a piece of music, they're composing a piece of music or doing a piece of writing for a book or a novel or something, they're inspired at a certain moment of time. I think I recall it was said of somebody, a teacher in China that used to sit on the corner of the street waiting for a moment of inspiration, and he was also a writer, in order to get that stimulation in which to write. That's how we think today of inspiration. But that's not how it's used here. The word inspiration actually goes all the way back to the Latin Vulgate, which was written or translated into Latin by Jerome. But the word here, inspiration, in the Greek is theonoustos, which means God breathe, very simply, God breathe. And all it's saying here is, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. All Scripture is God breathed. It comes from God's mouth. It's God's words. The Scriptures are God's words. The origin of Scripture, it's saying, is from God, basically. That's it. The origin of Scripture is not from man, it's from God. And we're here when Paul says, all Scripture. Of course, he's got the Old Testament in mind, but also at that time there were some New Testament letters which were doing the rounds, and some letters still to be written. The letters of John, Revelation was still to come. Well, it includes all of those. Still, all Scripture in its entirety is God-breathed, is inspired by God. Now, most Bible versions that I looked at for this text, they follow the similar wording as the King James Version. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. But some to render it in a different way. The English Revised Version and the American Standard Version, they put it in this way, every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for doctrine, for reproof, and so on. They started off, not all scripture is given by God, is given by inspiration of God, but every scripture inspired by God is profitable, and so on. It's a rather unfortunate translation, because if the translators or if the readers are thinking in terms like the King James Version, if they're thinking of every scripture as all scripture, that's all fair and well, that's okay. But when you say every scripture inspired of God, it's suggesting and opening the door for a misapprehension, misunderstanding that in the Bible there are some passages of scripture which are inspired and there are some which are not inspired. And what Paul then would be saying is, those scriptures which are in the Bible, which are inspired, are useful for teaching, for doctrine, and so on, for reproof. And those that are not, well, can you just bypass them? That's how people could take it. But then how are we to know? If that was the case, that was what Paul was saying. How are we to know which part of scripture is inspired and which is not? We wouldn't know. So that's not really what Paul is saying here. Nothing really could be further from Paul's mind. When he says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, he means all scripture is breathed out by God, not parts of it. But there are people today who believe that and who hold to that. And that's why it's vital for us to even say these things and to be familiar with them. So Paul is saying to Timothy, this is where you must put your confidence, in this book. Not in the writings of men, but in these writings that have been breathed out by God and therefore are authoritative. Now this concept of inspiration is not Paul's original idea. It's not something new. If you look in Isaiah 45 and verse 23, there we read, the word has gone out of my mouth. the Lord said. And then in the wilderness temptation, when the Lord rebuked the tempter, he was quoting from Deuteronomy, and he said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. The same idea is in mine, God's word coming from his mouth. So once again, all scripture friends, here means every word in the Bible is inspired. Now there are also some people who believe inspiration relates only to the thoughts and the ideas and the concepts that are in the Bible. But this scripture is also telling us it goes all the way down to the words, the very words as they were originally given, not just the thoughts and ideas of the writers, but the very words of God. This is what the Bible claims. Every word in the originals as originally given, was given by inspiration of God. And it's referred to, as you know, I'm sure, as verbal, plenary inspiration. Verbal meaning every individual word in the Bible, and plenary being the entire Bible. So, not just parts of it, but all of it, and every word of it was given by the Lord. Now, we then ask the question, since this was so, every word comes from God, how did God actually give us this written word? How did it go from the words of God to the Bible that we now have. What happened to bring it to this place? For that we need to turn to 2 Peter 1. 2 Peter 1, verse 20. And Peter says, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation, but the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. So here in this passage, Peter is telling the believers, previous to these verses I just read, he's telling them, you have our testimony. You have the testimony of the apostles. We've not been following cunningly devised fables and stories. We were eyewitnesses, we were earwitnesses of the majesty of Christ. We heard from Christ Himself. We saw, we were with Him in that Mount of Transfiguration. We heard the voice of God. We saw the glory of Christ with our very eyes. He said, so you have as believers this testimony But you have here in the word of prophecy something more sure. Verse 19, we also have a more sure word of prophecy. A more sure word of prophecy, the prophetic word, not only the prophecies in the Bible, but the whole scriptures is in mind. And he says, you would do well to take heed to this. And then he proceeds to say from that, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. In other words, he's saying, it's not that The Scriptures are the result of human investigation and reasoning. It's not like a PhD student has done his research and these are his findings and he's giving to us his findings. That's not what's in mind here. This book is not of private interpretation. It's not as if the disciple just saw Christ's life and observed his life and put their own interpretation on things. This is not a book of man or the thoughts of man. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man. It was not of human origin. That's what he's saying. It's not the same sort of thing what Paul is saying. The scriptures have their origin in God. Continue verse to run. The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. That's just what Paul has been teaching. But Peter actually tells us a little bit more. That this is not a book that I just dropped down from heaven, as one of the cults believes about their book. It just was buried and came from outer space. That's not what we believe. but that God gave it to us by means of men who spake from Him. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The word there, moved, means to bear, to carry, to be born. Holy men who spake from God were carried along, were born along by the Holy Spirit. If you carry something, the thing that is carried It's passive, isn't it? If I carry a chair from here to the sanctuary, the chair is passive, it's under my control, it's in my hands, it's a passive object. And here the suggestion is, and the teaching really is, the scribes of Scripture were also carried along, were born along by the power of the Holy Spirit. The writers of Scripture, in one sense, were passive, because they were under the control of the Holy Spirit. I can see some of you are a little bit wondering about this now. Does that mean that they were switched off? Does that mean they went into some kind of a trance? And then they were just like passive, 100% passive? Were they just automatons, automatons just not exercising their thinking? And then just like a... Dictaphone? Is that how it all happened? You know, in English classes or foreign language classes, your teacher reads a passage and you have to copy it down word for word, as the teacher says, dictation exercises. Is that how it happened? No, that's not what's in mind here. It's not like a dictaphone at all. Because here Peter also says, that the holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. God spoke, yes, but he spoke through man. The words were God, but they came through human instrumentality. These are the words of God, but at the same time, they are the words of men. It's a human side also to inspiration. Let me give you some scriptures. Matthew 22 and verse 43, we have, David in the spirit calls him Lord. It's David speaking, but he's in the spirit calling him Lord. Matthew 19. Let me just turn to the Matthew. And verse 4, and here the Lord is treating Moses, talking about divorce and marriage. And he answered and said unto them, have you not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? And said, for this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. The Lord is here treating Moses' words as the Word of God. It's Moses' words, written words, but he's speaking of it as the Word of God. And again, Mark chapter 7. And here the Lord is dealing with the honoring of father and mother. Mark chapter 7 and verse 10. He says, for Moses said, honor thy father and thy mother. Whoso cursed that father or mother, let him die the death. But then if you go down to verse 13, he talks about them making the word of God of none effect through their tradition. So here he is saying the two are together. The word of Moses. and is actually the Word of God. What Moses said was also God's command and was also the Word of God. And there are many examples like that in scripture. Yes, there's God, the Holy Spirit, we could say our inspiration, God, the Holy Spirit in full control of the human writers, and yet they're not passive, entirely passive. They are active, they're using their mind, and God is superintending what they're doing and what they're writing. B.B. Warfield has compared inspiration to a stained glass window. So you know with a stained glass window, three things he mentions about it. One, it lets light in, just as the designer planned. And then each piece of glass is carefully prepared and placed for desired effect in its position. And then the many pieces complete the whole window. And with the scriptures it says it's the same. God's light of truth came through the human writers just as he planned it to be. And then each writer, just as each piece in that stained glass window is carefully prepared and put into position, so each writer of Scripture was providentially prepared for that writing that he was going to do. It wasn't that all of a sudden God decided, oh, I'm going to use this person to write this piece. No, they were prepared to write specific parts. So, you know, Moses, he was learned in the writings in Egypt, and he was well-read in the Egyptian things, and he wrote the way that he did. But it's different to the way Isaiah wrote the Scriptures. Isaiah's style and Moses' style is completely different. And then you look at the New Testament, you see there's a difference between Paul's writing and John's writing, for example. And perhaps John could never write in the same strong arguments that Paul puts in his letters. There are different styles of writing and we know the preparation that went into Paul's life to prepare him, not just for ministry, but for writing of the Scriptures. So every writer was providentially prepared for that part of Scripture that he was to write. And then many different writers contributed to this final revelation that we have of God's Word. So yes, the the authors, the human authors, they were thinking, their writing style, their vocabulary of the human authors, it was not suspended during that time when they wrote under inspiration. They were not in any trance-like situation. But they wrote freely, they wrote naturally, but it was under the control of the Holy Spirit. How it actually happened, we don't know. I have to say, we don't know. It's a mystery how that actually happened. And it's something that we'll never know until glory. So when they wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit, their writings were kept free from any error of any sort. When they were not under inspiration, And they were just like any other human author. And they were prone to human error, just like any other author is today. So inspiration leads to inerrancy. Inspiration leads to accuracy of Scripture. The Bible is free from inaccuracies, not only in theology, friends, but in every subject it tackles, in history, in geography, in science even. The Bible is always true. The Bible is always accurate, even though science has a problem with that. But it's always proved to be true. But I close then. What does the Bible say about itself, just that it is inspired? And what does this inspiration mean? Well, I'll let E.J. Young tell you himself. E.J. Young says this, according to the Bible, inspiration is a superintendence of God the Holy Spirit over the writers of the scriptures, as a result of which These scriptures possess divine authority and trustworthiness, and possessing such divine authority and trustworthiness are free from error. And I think that captures it in a nutshell, really. So friends, we have a very precious book in our hands. We have an inspired Bible. We have a trustworthy Bible. It gives us such a firm foundation in the things that we hold on to and believe. It gives us a sure footing as we walk through life. We know we're going in the right direction. We know where we're heading because God has told us so. When we're following his word, when we're doing what he bids us, when we're coming in his way, going in his way, it gives us a confidence in our lives, an assurance about our steps that we're taking. That's why we make so much of it. And that's why it's so central to our worship and practice. That's why we love it. That's why we love the Word because it's God's Word and we treasure it and we want to take heed to it as well. Amen.