Sermon Tone Analysis

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

[1]

For the past several weeks, the distinctive doctrines defining a Baptist congregation have been the focus of our studies in the Word.

What are the beliefs that have historically defined Baptists as a people of God?

In a sense, if we are true to the Baptist Faith, each time we worship, the message presented and the hymns of praise offered up will be an affirmation of Baptist doctrine.

At the outset, I should confess that the text before us today has become most precious for me.

It has provided stability in the midst of a volatile and unpredictable world.

The text speaks of the revelation of God through His Word, the Bible.

The Bible, which is declared to be the Word of God, is the focus of this day’s message.

The source of Scripture and the value of the Word and the purpose of God’s communication are considered.

As Christians, we need to know what God says concerning His Word so that we will be able to understand His will and so that we will know the truths He considers to be important, even vital, for our well-being.

Peter attests of those who wrote the Scriptures and especially of what they wrote, “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” [2 PETER 1:21].

As Baptists, we accept the Bible to be God’s Word, divinely communicated for our benefit and for God’s glory.

We believe that the Bible was given by God, communicating through men who were superintended by the Holy Spirit in order to reveal God’s Person and His will to all mankind.

In saying this, we acknowledge that we are obligated both to know God as He has revealed Himself, and to make Him known.

I invite you to open your Bible to this familiar and vital statement from the pen of the Apostle Paul.

Together, let’s discover God’s purpose in delivering His Word to us.

Learning this crucial truth, we will perhaps have a clearer understanding of the purpose for which the Bible has been given and we will learn to esteem this Word.

THE SOURCE OF THE WORD OF GOD — “All Scripture is breathed out by God”—theopneustos, God-breathed.

According to the Word, “Every word of God proves true” [PROVERBS 30:5].

One popular translation commonly used by evangelicals, translates that verse, “Every word of God is flawless” [PROVERBS 30:5, NIV].

The text pointedly teaches that every word of Scripture as originally written is the very word God intended to be written.

To put the matter another way, the doctrine of “verbal inspiration” of Scripture is that the very words of Scripture—the words themselves and not just the general ideas—are “God breathed.”

Therefore, when you read the Bible, you are reading the very words of God.

We do not worship the Bible as though it was a god, but we do receive its words as the very words of God breathed out for our benefit.

I realise that every religion claims divine origin for the words they hold sacred.

Mormons claim that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates he found buried in New York State.

Smith claimed that he was guided to the plates by the angel Maroni.

He would place a “peep stone” in the crown of a hat, and covering his face with the hat he would spell out the words that were in turn written down by Hiram Page.

He “translated” these plates without even having the plates in front of him because he claimed they remained buried!

That would certainly qualify as a claim for divine origin.

Muslims claim that an illiterate Arab named Muhammad received a series of revelations from the angel Gabriel that were in turn written down on “ribs of palm leaves and tablets of white stone” to become the Quran.

It is not a problem for Islamic “scholars” that the palm leaves and tablets of white stone are not found and that the first written efforts at what would become the Quran were not produced for hundreds of years.

Buddhists and Hindus make similar claims of divine origin for their sacred writings.

Christians make a claim that proponents of any religion would make.

How can we know that the Bible is the Word of God?

Why can we be so confident of this claim?

First, understand that the Bible was written by over forty different writers.

Each claimed to have been guided by the Spirit of God, just as Peter asserted in the verse we saw earlier [see 2 PETER 1:21].

The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Daniel and the various Minor Prophets repeatedly claim that the Lord spoke to them, and that they were writing down the very words that God spoke.

[2] The Apostles likewise claimed that God spoke through the prophets [see ACTS 3:21].

If this is true, then there should be an internal consistency from beginning to end.

Whether it was Moses that was writing in the Pentateuch or whether it was John writing while in exile on Patmos, since the Spirit of God superintended the writer there should be an internal consistency of doctrinal matters.

Peter makes this very claim in 2 PETER 1:20, “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.”

Despite having been written by individuals representing a variety of backgrounds, including shepherds, scholars, fishermen, courtiers, physicians, the Bible presents a doctrinal unity.

The consistent message of the Word is that man was ruined by the Fall and is thus incapable of pleasing God through his own strength.

God alone provides the way for man to approach Him.

Spurgeon summarised the issue precisely when he wrote that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

[3] And man glorifies God through coming to Him through accepting the sacrifice of God’s own Son.

If the Bible is truly the Word of God, we should have confidence that it has been divinely preserved so that man can know the mind of God.

There are over five thousand New Testament manuscripts and Scripture portions, in addition to multiple ancient translations of the New Testament.

Some of the manuscripts were being circulated among the churches even in the days of the Apostles.

The books of the New Testament were immediately circulated following their writing.

Those same copies of letters and accounts of Jesus’ life were widely circulated as churches shared the writings they received.

That this was the early practise is evident from a statement in the Colossian letter.

“When this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea” [COLOSSIANS 4:16].

If you study a critical copy of the Koine Greek New Testament you will notice that part of each page provides an apparatus so the reader can be made aware of variant readings of biblical manuscripts.

The student will discover that for the most part, the discrepancies amount to questions of the spelling of proper nouns, whether a definite article should be used or not, word order, or other such minor issues.

Except for a handful of questionable verses, the text of the New Testament is 99.9% settled!

The Old Testament has even fewer questions concerning what was written down.

This certainty is due in great measure because of the care with which Masoretic scribes copied the manuscripts.

Generally, the Old Testament Scriptures were written on velum—animal skins that assured durability for the scriptural writings.

On occasion, the Old Testament Scriptures appear to have been transcribed onto copper scrolls.

The copyist would pronounce the word he was about to copy.

Then, he would say aloud each letter as he copied that letter.

If he came to the Name of God—Yahweh—he would stop, bathe, and then return to his work.

He would use a new pen and write the tetragrammaton—YHWH.

At the end of each line, he would count the number of letters to ensure that no extraneous letters were inadvertently introduced, which would, of course, ruin the copy and possibly change the meaning of Scripture.

If a count revealed the inclusion of an extra letter, or the omission of a letter, the entire copy was destroyed.

Even if it was the final line of the copy, the entire copy was destroyed.

Consequently, even the Isaiah scroll, an ancient copper scroll containing the prophecy of Isaiah, agrees with copies made by the Masoretes as late as the New Testament era.

Again, copies of the Old Testament Scriptures were circulated widely, so that ample access was provided for any seeking to know the Word of God.

In addition to the aforementioned issues that give us confidence in the divine origin of our Bible—doctrinal consistency and manuscript dissemination—there is also the issue of prophetic fulfillment.

At the time it was written, over two-thirds of the Bible was prophecy.

Most of the prophecies of the Bible have already been fulfilled.

For instance, at His birth, Jesus fulfilled multiple prophecies; and in His death, our Lord fulfilled over seventy prophecies.

Many of the prophecies relate to Israel because they rejected the reign of the Living God and pursued their own desires.

Of course, this high degree of accuracy gives us confidence that the prophecies that relate to the future will likewise find fulfillment just as have those prophecies that dealt with past matters.

The Bible sets a rather high standard for prophets—they must bat one thousand.

So the people of God could discern whether a prophet spoke the words of God, Moses wrote, “If you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously.

You need not be afraid of him” [DEUTERONOMY 18:21, 22].

All one need do is check the fulfillment of the prophecy to determine if the origin is divine.

Even more important, the prophet must maintain doctrinal integrity with what has already been written!

Moses warned the people of Israel, “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.

For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul [DEUTERONOMY 13:1-3].

When Paul wrote that “all Scripture is breathed out by God,” it becomes obvious to the unbiased observer that he communicated a truth that is abundantly verified by fact.

Certainly, one may refuse to believe this, but there are consequences for such refusal.

Assuredly, one may substitute human reason or the latest scholarly opinion in the place of biblical authority for one’s attitudes and actions, but the individual who seeks to do so fabricates authority from a will ‘o the wisp.

THE VALUE OF THE WORD OF GOD — “All Scripture is … profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”

If we will know God, then we must be cautious not to recast God in our image.

Unfortunately, many recent translations of the Word of God attempt to force God into the mould of contemporary thought.

One example of this effort to dress God in modern garb is demonstrated by recent efforts to make the Bible “gender neutral.”

For instance, in “TODAY’S NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION” Scripture becomes “gender neutral.”

Apparently, the “Committee on Bible Translation” no longer believe that “every word of God is flawless,” because they find it necessary to make His words “gender neutral” so that they will be more acceptable to modern people.

Apparently, God is incapable of saying what He means and meaning what He says.

This introduces us to consideration of the value of the Word that we received from God. Pastor Warren Wiersbe has wisely observed that the Bible is “profitable for teaching (what is right), for reproof (what is not right), for correction (how to get right), and for training in righteousness (how to stay right).

A Christian who studies the Bible and applies what he learns will grow in holiness.”

[4]

We need to thoroughly understand what was intended to be communicated when Paul chose these particular words.

When he says Scripture is “profitable for teaching,” Paul used a Greek term that was translated in earlier translations as doctrine.

[5] However, translations that employ the word “teaching” convey the Apostle’s intention more accurately than does use of the word “doctrine.”

What we believe must be determined by the Bible, and not by any other authority.