We've been dealing with the scriptures. and where they came from, their inspiration, and things of this nature. And we're going to continue today dealing with the Scripture and an aspect of the Scripture in its origination. So in 2 Timothy 3, we're going to read verses 16 and 17. It says, "...all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Why? That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Wonderful verse. We probably all have it memorized. Now all we have to do is understand what it's saying, right? That was chapter 3 of 2 Timothy, verse 16. All right, let's have a word of prayer before we begin. Father, I want to thank you that you are so kind and gracious to us, very, very patient. And Father, as we move through these thoughts, through this study, that it would give us a deeper appreciation for thy word. And that we would realize, even more than we do now, that it is a divine book, an inspired book, not just like any other book that's in the library. But Father, it is the expression of thy will and the revelation of thy character and thy person. May we understand that this morning in Jesus' name, amen. Now last week we spoke about, we are talking about the scripture's origination, and that we believe that the Holy Bible was written by men, divinely inspired, and that's what we were dealing with last week. And then we wanted to look at some things concerning the scripture, because it is important that we understand what the Bible is to us, or ought to be to us. Sometimes formulating words in my brain, you know, at the same time is, I got to pause every once in a while here. Because the scripture's origin is of God. This is where we left off last week. Because the scripture's origin is of God, it must be like unto him. In other words, if God gives us the scripture, then the scripture must be of the same character, the same nature as God himself. God cannot produce something less than what is demanded by his character. It isn't going to be something lesser than what God is Himself. He cannot produce something inferior to His nature and character. Therefore, the Word of God must be like unto Him. Therefore, it must be eternal. God's Word must be eternal. And if we go to Psalm 119.89, Psalm 118.89, Now, I have been, this week, I've been actually meditating in this psalm. It's a nice long psalm, but there's lots of good things in it. Psalm 89, or Psalm 119, 89 says, Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled, not upon the earth, but it is settled in heaven. Its origin is the God of heaven. It is forever settled in heaven. and it is forever. So God's Word is like unto Him, it is eternal. There's nothing that is found in God's Word that is different from whom He is and His character. In the 152nd verse of this psalm, it says, Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast founded them forever. So his testimonies, he said, I've known of old, he says, I've known for a very, very long, long time that they have been founded, and that has to, founded, when we think of founded, we are dealing with its origination, its foundation is forever. So like unto his word, I mean, his word is like unto him, it is eternal. This is God's eternal word. Therefore, we must approach it as we ought to approach the word like we ought to approach the Father. In other words, if we approach the Father in humility and in submissiveness, we go to the Father and pray to him as we approach him, so what we ought to approach his word. Do we give the same reverence to his word as we tend to give to him personally? And a lot of times we don't, do we? We just kind of get it out and say, okay, the devotional for the day is at such and such place, and we read it and go, oh, that's wonderful, and away we go. And that's not uncommon to our nature, is it? but we need to approach God's word as if we were approaching the very throne of heaven. John Gill says that the things contained in them are sure and certain, established and eternal truths. The moral law and the precepts of it are eternal and of perpetual obligation. Not one jot nor tittle shall there ever fail. The gospel and the truths of it are everlasting and shall ever remain, in spite of all opposition, craft, and cunning, fury, and force of men, to undermine and root them out." So no matter what comes against the Word, it will always be firm and established. Now, does Satan attempt to undermine the Word of God? Do we not have false Bibles today? If the Word of God teaches us, and it does, that there are false prophets and false apostles, what makes us think... Oh, I've got to turn this thing on. You didn't raise your hand over there, brother. Is it on? Oh, there we go. What's that? You didn't turn it on either? Okay, I don't know which... Is it now? Okay, I don't want you to miss a single thing that I say because it's so important, right? Well, I'm not going to go that far. If Satan has false apostles and false prophets in this world, what makes us think that there are not false Bibles? This is one reason why we hold so dearly to the King James Version. Not because it's the King James Version, but because of the text The original Hebrew and Greek texts from which we have our English translation. Because of the accuracy of the Greek text and the Hebrew text and its translation into the English language, we know this and we also know this to be a faithful and true translation of those texts. Now, we'll get into later in another portion, we'll deal with the text from which all these come from. A lot of people don't realize, some people think that, oh, there's only one Greek text when we're speaking about the Greek, but no, there's an eclectic text and there is the received text, two different texts altogether. Now, not only are the words eternal, But being likened to God, the word must be pure and holy. It must be pure and holy. Psalm 119, or if you're still there, 140 says, Thy word is very pure, therefore thy servant loveth it. Why should we love the word of God? because of its purity. Isn't that what David says? Thy word is very pure. Therefore, thy servant loveth it. Because that we know this to be the pure word of God, we have all confidence in what it has to tell us, don't we? If we weren't confident about what it's telling us, we ought to be troubled by that. But if we have confidence, because we understand its purity, that it is holy, then we can put our trust in what it tells us, in what it says. In Proverbs 30, verse 5, it says, every word of God is pure. Every word of God is pure. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Every word of God is pure. Therefore, we love it. Therefore, we go to it for instruction. Therefore, we allow it to rebuke us. Therefore, we do the things that follow the instructions in the word of God. So it is a pure and holy word. In Romans 12, or not 12, Romans chapter 1, Paul starts off over there. Romans chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. says Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel which he hath promised afore by his prophets in the Holy Scripture. I said that the scripture is both pure and holy. It is likened to God. If God is pure, if God is holy, so is his word. Paul says he's called an apostle, both apostles separated, set apart for the gospel, which he promised before by the prophets. And that's all Paul had at this time. There was no New Testament. There was no Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Luke. He couldn't go to the Gospels because they didn't have them at that point. Or they were in development, let's put it. They were starting to appear. But rather, he's saying that They were promised afore by the prophets, because it tells us in Hebrews chapter 1 that what? He spoke to us in various times and manners by the prophets, right? So he says that they're promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures. He said that the Old Testament, were holy. These were holy scriptures. They were worthy of reverence. And David speaks of in great reverence. to the law, the testimonies, the precepts, the things concerning God, he speaks to them in great reverence because they were holy. And in 2 Timothy 3.15 where our text was, the verse before says, that from a child thou hast known the sacred or holy scriptures. Sacred and holy are synonymous. The scriptures are sacred. When we approach the scriptures, do we approach them as sacred? This ought to give us a, when we think about this, this makes a higher standard for us when we approach the scriptures. We don't or ought not to approach it like we're reading any other book. It is only discernible by the spirit of God. We don't understand the book apart from the Spirit of God who teaches us the book. We need the Holy Spirit to teach us what's written in the book. As God is infinitely pure and holy, so must His Word be. He cannot lie, so His Word cannot lie. It must, without fail, disseminate the truth. Thy word is truth. Sanctify them by thy truth. Thy word is truth. John 17, 17. So this is a sacred scripture that it is without fail pure and holy as our God is. And it has only one purpose in the sense that it disseminates truth because God cannot lie to us. The word is like unto himself. And because God is life, so his word is a living word. If there is life in God, and all life originates in God, so must that which comes from him be living. We all know Hebrews 4.12, right? For the word of God is quick. Anybody tell me what the word quick means? I'm sorry, what was it you said? To be made alive? Brother, what did you say over here? Piercing? Okay. Is quick just mean fast? Really, really fast? Yeah. That's the quick? We're going to get into that, but the word quick in this case, when we look in the New Testament, refers to living or alive. You have to be quickened or made alive. In this case, it's the living word. It says, for the word of God is living. and powerful, and that has to do with energy. It has energy. It's energetic, if you will. And sharper, there's the piercing, sharper than any two-edged sword. piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and the joints and marrow, and as a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Now, what makes the Word of God living, or to whom is the Word of God living and powerful? Is it to the unbeliever? Is the Word of God living and powerful to the unbelieving? No, it isn't. But to the unbelieving, what is it? It's just words. Because the Bible tells us that it is spiritually discerned. We are a spiritual people. Those in Christ are a spiritual people. This is a spiritual book given to spiritual people. It is discernible by the Holy Spirit. And therefore, it is living to us who believe. Well, I'm in Romans. Let's see if I can find it here real quick. Sometimes verses just come to mind when you're up here. Verse 16 of chapter 1 says, of Romans, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, or is believing, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. It is the power of God unto salvation, the deliverance of those who are believing. who are actually believing, that's where the power of God is. It's not the cause of one believing. There's a lot of preachers that preach that if we preach the word of God, that causes people to believe. Therefore, we need to make sure they get the word of God because that's the cause of their believing. There's a little fallacy with that, a little bit of a problem, because that means that whenever an unbeliever would come into this congregation, and we'd preach the word and read the word, they ought to go away believing. Right? If the word of God is that, if it's the word of God that gives life, then if they hear the word of God, then they ought to be getting life. Right? The impartation of life then comes by the preacher who delivers the word. You see a little problem with that? There's a lot of preachers out there who think that by the delivery of the Word, people are going to get saved because they preach the Word. The Word of God is effectual in converting the soul. That conversion of the soul is after life has been imparted to them because there's no ability to believe before they have received or have been born from above. Now what is one of the fruits of the Spirit? We know it's love. So one, he cannot love God until the Spirit of God indwells him. Romans 5.5 says that we love God because the Holy Spirit is shed and brought in our heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. We see there in Galatians 5 that the fruit of the Spirit, the result, the outcoming of the fruit of the Spirit is love. Then we got joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. Faith is the next one. Faith, so where does faith come from? God, the impartation of grace. It's a grace gift to believe, which comes at the new birth, where this new spiritual man is now able to believe, which now, when the word of God comes to him, he believes that word, he casts himself upon that word, and is converted by the word. That's the work, it's effectual in the heart of the believing because for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation to them that believe or who are believing. The ETH makes it believing to the Jew first and also to the Greek. So we see that it is quick, it makes alive It's powerful, it's sharper than any two-edged sword. Now, how many of you have a sword at home? Nobody has their sword? I can't believe that. You have a sword? I got a machete, but it's only sharp on one side. The reference is probably to the well-familiar sword of the Roman centurion or the Roman guard where they had a sword that was sharp on both sides, not on one side. They wanted cutting this way and they wanted it cutting that way. So, they were very adept at using that sword in the destruction of their enemies. Speaks of the Word of God having a double blade. And what's interesting, and I just thought of this, preachers come up with things as they're going along, so I hope it makes sense. So, the sharpening, piercing, even the dividing and sundering of soul and spirit. The soul of man, the spirit of man, and it can divide there. But it also talks about the dividing of the joints and marrow. One's spiritual, one has no physicality, the other one does. Joints and marrow, talk about my bones, right? Soul and spirit is not that thing which is tangible. You can't touch your soul and you can't touch your spirit. Was it soul and spirit? Yes. The intangible parts. So the word of God gets to both. Now you say, how does it affect my health? How many times do you read in the Bible where it speaks about the word of God being health to our bones? Let me tell you, does anxiety affect your health? Does fear affect your health? Does mental instabilities, whatever they may be, affect your health? Do not problems in your home affect your health? There's all sorts of things that are external that affects our health, not just what we eat, not just the germs we might ingest, but there are a lot of things externally that affect our health. Does the Word of God deal with all these things I have just mentioned? Do they deal with anxiety? Do they deal with fears? Do they deal with interpersonal relationships? Do they deal with all these things that can affect our health? It does. So does it affect the joints and marrow? of our body, the Word of God, it does. So I don't think I'm going beyond the text and say, well, you're making more of this or spiritualize, well, no, that's not spiritualizing, that's making it more. More physical, isn't it? It affects every aspect of who we are. The Word of God is living and affects our physical well-being and our spiritual well-being. It is important and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Your motivations. What is motivating you? Should we compare our motivations to the Word of God? What is motivating us to do something? Does the Word of God deal with those things, whether we be positively motivated or negatively motivated? Now, is there anything wrong with negative motivation? Think about it. Do we not do things because of the fear of the judgment? Whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap destruction. He that soweth to the Spirit shall reap life everlasting. So let me ask you, are we not, from a negative point of view, fearing the Lord and His Word, be motivated to live righteously? So yes, it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And the Word of God manifests and reveals these things to us. Is this important? It is very important. God's Word is a living book to His people. This living word pierces into the hearts and souls, body and frame to produce holiness of life and godly character. That's what this book does. How are we furnished unto all good works? That's exactly what our text says, isn't it? Also, it says that we are, over in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10, says that we are saved to do, that by his grace, There's work to do. It's there in Ephesians 2.10. I'll go over there real quick. Ordained unto these works. For we are his workmanship, created unto Christ Jesus, unto good works which Christ hath ordained, which God hath ordained, that we should walk in them. This is all part of it. So he has saved us to walk in these good works that he has ordained for us to do and that's believing in his word, walking. Yes, good smack to the side of the head, right? Trip to the woodshed, you know, however you want to express it. You know, some young people have no idea what that means, you know. I know what it meant when my dad took off his belt. There was a definite meaning in that, and I understood it. It was appropriately applied, and I learned a great deal from it. Fear my dad? Absolutely. Reverential fear for my dad and his law, right? David, don't do that. David doesn't, goes and does it. And my dad just said, here, we're going to fix this little problem so that you don't do it again. We, I have been sent out on one or two occasions to cut a willow down, cut the branch of a willow tree. So yeah, it is a, It is an experience that cannot be replaced by any other, but it was good for me. Doesn't it say that the chastisement of the Lord, it brings forth the fruits of righteousness, and peace. So the Lord chastising us brings a positive result. Now, it is the living word of God that convicts men, convicts us, revealing the Savior and God's eternal purpose. The word itself does not give life, but for the believing it is effectual and delivers us from sin unto godliness, and we are able to escape the corruptions of this present life. In fact, I got to Romans 16 ahead of where it is in my notes, so that's all right. But over in 2 Peter 1, verse 4, in fact, there's some, unlike all the scriptures, I like to say, oh, this is my favorite, but it isn't. There's so many of them that are alike, but in chapter 1, and Verse 3, and we'll start in verse 3. "...according as his divine power hath given unto us..." Who's us? It's those that Peter's writing to, which are those who have obtained like precious faith, those who are members of the Lord's churches. He says, "...according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that hath called us unto glory and virtue." So what did God give us? Everything that we need that pertains to this life and the next and to godliness. Where did he give them to us? They're all recorded in his word and he's given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue. How do we obtain this? Through the knowledge of Christ. Where do we get this? From the Word of God. You see how it all goes back to the Word of God? Then he goes on, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. Where do we read about them? In the Word of God, that by these ye may be partakers of the Old nature? The divine nature. Divine means it originates with God. So it's talking about the new nature, this divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in this world through the lust. Is there corruption in this world? Are we not filled with all sorts of diverse kinds of lust? You know, that's the corruption, our corruption, right? But we have escaped the corruption that is in this world. How is it that we escape? What does this mean? This means that we don't get, that the word of God delivers us from getting involved in the things of this world. It helps us to recognize that which is sin, that which is debauchery, that which would take claim upon our lives, that which would hurt us. And the Word of God delivers us from the hands of wicked and evil men and their activities. So the Word of God does all this for us, so it is able for us to escape the corruption that is in this world through lust. Now, the next thing I want us to look at is the Scripture's transcription. It is important for us to understand how God transcribed His Word. How did it come? Did men just suddenly have an idea and wrote it down? I just, I got a pen, I got a pencil, paper, idea. I write it down. Is that how the word of God was transcribed to us? How much of men's intelligence was employed in the writing of the scripture? Sometimes there's some good, honest questions that are involved with this. Now there's, I said there are three common transcription theories, however, I've got about seven of them written down, so I don't know why I wrote three. Must have added them last night or something, I don't know. There are three common theories about, three, there's several common theories about transcription. And it's important that we know about them because men employ them in the production of Bibles, right? Say, this is the scripture. Well, how did they, how is this transcribed to us? How did we get it? What are your ideas and thoughts about how we got the word of God? And those are some things that you say, well, preacher, why are you teaching us that? Because you just need to know them. Because people are gonna tell you things. I was watching a, this was a long time ago. Remember the, Tabernacle Broadcast Company, Paul and Jen Couch. You know who I'm talking about. And they're sitting there in their studio, and they're reading this thing, this quote-unquote prophecy that somebody had written, and they're sitting there going, oh, this is the word of God, this is truth, this is thus and so. What they were doing was they were putting what this man had written, his prophetic utterance, whatever, at the same level as the scriptures. you hold in your hand. Do you see a problem with that? Well, that comes a lot of times out of our ideas of transcribing. One is the Neo-Orthodox view, the New Orthodox view. This theory emphasizes the transcendency of God, suggesting that the Bible is a witness to the Word of God rather than the Word of God itself. In other words, it's just telling us what the Word of God is, although it's not the Word of God actually. And it teaches that the Bible contains heirs, and that it cannot be taken literally. That's the Neo-Orthodox view. And we see a lot of these views of the Scripture in the preaching of preachers. and their attitudes concerning the scripture. How are we going to know the false teacher from the true? By their fruits ye shall know them, by the things that they teach, by the things that they preach. And if we understand their view of the scripture, we'll hear that come out in their preaching. It'll be manifested in their preaching. So this view transcends God. It emphasizes the transcendence of God, that God is above anything that we could have as far as a written word is concerned. And that it's just, this just does the best it can to given us what God, it's just a witness to God. Then there's the intuition theory. a mode of intelligence in matters of moral and religion which gives rise to sacred books. In other words, because somebody has this great understanding of morality and a great intelligence, maybe philosophical, is able to produce books on religion, if we're using that term. And that's what gave rise to our Bibles today. If this were true, how then would it follow that other sacred scriptures of other religions would also be containing the Word of God in matters of moral and religion? Why wouldn't the Koran? Why wouldn't the Hindu Bibles or books that they use also contain God's word if it raised out of the morals and the... There were many men who were... Is the word ascetics? That they denied themselves food and clothing and just sat and meditated, I guess. And they became great spiritual leaders among their religion and uttered great proverbs. Buddha. uttered great proverbs, things of that nature. So does that give rise to spiritual books, to God's word? Absolutely not. Yeah? The Apocrypha gave rise during what are called the 400 silent years between the closing of the Old Testament canon which would be Malachi, and the beginning of the New Testament, which would be Matthew, there was what they call 400 silent years, when there was no prophet in Israel at all. And then during that period, there arose books that were written, which are called the Apocrypha. I'm not really sure what the word Apocrypha means. I didn't bother looking up that. fanciful stories, some historic, as there's some historic information there, but they're not considered a part of the scripture at all, never been received into the canon of scripture as being holy books from God. Right, right. Old covenant, new covenant. Yes, there's distinctions between the two. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. It's similar in that some people believe these to be important books, and they do have some historical references to them that would be helpful in understanding that period of time, but they are distinctly separate from the Scripture. One of the problems that we have is that the Catholics added them into their Bible between the Old and New, and they put in the Apocrypha. And the thing is, is that people accepted them because they were in their Bible as being a part of the Bible. This is one of the reasons I have problems with quote-unquote study Bibles. Years ago, they came out with the Schofield Reference Bible. and C.I. Schofield added his notes into the text, and they were at the bottom, and people would read those notes as if they had the same weight as the scripture, because they were contained within the confines of the two leaves of their Bible. So this is one of the problems I have with study Bibles, because you limit yourself to those notes, and because they're contained within that, with your Bible, that it's often given a great deal of weight, which does not belong to those notes. The notes are uninspired, The Word of God is inspired and therefore we ought to separate any notes like that that we have in our Bibles and remember that they're just the thoughts of the man who added them there, that they don't have any real weight apart from what the scriptures say. And just because the man said, well, this is what the Bible says, doesn't mean that's what the Bible says. If you had gotten out your Schofield Reference Bible, now that was back in my day. No, it's well used among the Bible church movement, things like that. Schofield Reference has over six different definitions for the word church. Now, do you think God had six different definitions for the word church in the New Testament? I don't think so either. But anyways, that's, but those are in his notes. And years ago, you'd hear people teaching, and if you had your New Schofield reference Bible, you could find what they were saying right in the bottom of the notes, and that's what they were teaching. And they received that as if they were receiving the word of God. Now, we basically have used up all of our time, but any more questions, and then we'll pick up with this next week. Any more questions? Why? I thought inquiring minds wanted to know. All right, let's close with a word of prayer, and then we'll be dismissed. Father, we thank you for the time we've had today in your Word. Bless us.