Infallible Word

The 1689 London Baptist Confession says, "The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible "rule of all saving knowledge, faith and obedience..."

It's sufficient. It's enough. It's equal to what it says it does. We don't need anything more than the Bible and with the Bible we are not lacking. God's Word is exactly the right amount of light. It's also certain. It's sure, true, and unfailing. And it's infallible. Indeed the Bible is inerrant, or without error. But infallible means it's without the possibility of error.

The Bible is infallible. Not only does it contain no errors, but there is nothing coming up tomorrow that will eventually prove the Bible wrong. There is no secret buried in Jerusalem that will one day be discovered by archeologist to disprove the Scripture. There is no lost text that will turn up to overthrow the truth of the Bible. No event will happen to undo the promises of God. The inerrancy of Scripture tells me God's word is true. The infallibility of Scripture tells me God's Word will stand. I don't have to fear tomorrow. Nothing can stop God's program. No event will take God by surprise. No tragedy will undermine the Word. It cannot fail because HE cannot fail.

Metaphorically Speaking

The sixth chapter of Romans is a hard chapter to wrap our minds around. Every born again child of God knows the difficulty of rightly understanding and then living out our relationship to the law and living under grace. Paul deals with the truth by showing how our justification by faith and our union in Christ makes it a contradiction for a Christian to continue to live in sin. After explaining the truth, Paul restates it and illustrates the point. He says Romans 6:19, “I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh.” In other words, Paul’s going to give us an illustration from life to help us connect the dots of this spiritual reality.

People think in metaphors and illustrations. God created us to think in illustrations. Some functional MRI brain imaging studies done by the University of Arizona show, “when you hear a metaphor such as "she had a rough day," regions of the brain associated with tactile experience are activated. If you hear, "he's so sweet," areas associated with taste are activated. And when you hear action verbs used in a metaphorical context, like "grasp a concept," regions involved in motor perception and planning are activated,”(University of Arizona. (2019, April 2). How the brain finds meaning in metaphor. ScienceDaily).  They studied the brain with an EEG while participants read three synonymous sentences, two literal renderings and the third using a metaphor, and the brain acted much faster when the person read the metaphor.

Because of the weakness of humanity, the latter part of Romans 6 and the first part of chapter 7 are illustrations to restate the doctrine. Paul explains the doctrine, then provides some illustrations to drive the point home. Why? Because our creator knows how He made us. Don’t feel bad if you read something in the Bible and at first don’t understand or if you don’t grasp a doctrine or a concept immediately. Also, don’t give up! One of the keys to Bible study is if there is a difficult verse that you are having trouble grasping, there are often other passages that shed more light in other places. Or, as in our case, there are illustrations and further explanation. So, if you had trouble grasping Romans 6:14 or 6:18, God has given us an illustration to think about it another way.

This is another example of God’s goodness. God could have given us a Bible all in one genre of writing. Explicit truth number one. Truth number two. Truth number three, and therefore and etc. But God has given us a book with different ways of revealing his truth. Some poetry, some history, some parables, but  all unfolding the unified truth revealed by our Creator. You should expect parts of the Scripture to be deep and profound. We are dealing with truths about the Holy God and eternity. But God wants His people to know, so He gave us a book to explain it.

Believe the Bible when you read

John 4:5  Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

Read your Bible like a Christian. John believed the book of Genesis. I point this out because many commentators and authors don’t. Some well educated scholars like to clear their throats and mumble things about the primitive times and offer apologies for the rubes who didn’t know any better to believe the stories of Genesis, including the Apostle John. John is one of those people who believed the historical account of Genesis. Even that is a bridge too far for some.

The New Testament authors believed in the historical account of Genesis. As a Christian, you should have the same view of the Old Testament as the men who wrote the New Testament. Don’t be fooled by people who want you, as a Christian, to read the Old Testament like a heathen. John, wrote the inspired Scripture, God’s very word, believing the historical account. You should too.

Is there Truth?

I’m not a doctor, but I think I may have whiplash. Last week, I read one columnist assure his readers everything is going to be fine regarding the virus. The next article was from his colleague, that assured us the world is on fire and that we are weeks away from entering the realm of the Lord of the Flies. So while I have the conch, I will like to tell you why there are so many opposite stories.

"Lord of the Flies" by Gonzalo Martínez Moreno 

 In logic, there is an axiom called “the law of noncontradiction”. The law means two contradictory statements can’t be true, when used in the same sense. For example, everything is fine and the world is about to devolve into anarchy cannot be true at the same time. Certainly, both can be false, but they can’t both be true. That’s simple enough, but let’s go a bit further. How does this happen? Are both groups lying? Perhaps. Another possibility is they both believe what they are saying and are wrong.  The media purports itself to be unbiased, but I am of the opinion that there is no such thing. Unless you are a jellyfish, you come to every issue with preconceived notions and beliefs. And, perhaps even these gelatinous scyphozoan are fixed in their view of the world.

Some are calm, collected, and reassuring, but have no grounds for their hope other than a hunch or a wrongheaded idea of reality. Others are running in circles with their hands flailing about to and fro in a panic because they can foresee no other possibility than scientific models of worst-case scenarios playing out — because they have misplaced trust in fallible scientific models, or what I like to call “guesses”. These opposite views are more like siblings. They have hope and fear based on their presuppositions. Two people can read the same news story, one go out and buy gold along with 3,400 rolls of toilet paper while the other will read it and roll their eyes and think it’s preposterous. I’m not suggesting the noble “third way” but to consider your source. Not just the source of what your read and hear, but the source of how you read and interpret. What’s your bias?

People look at things from the perspective of their beliefs. I am a pastor, and I write this column every week, not as some unbiased entity who is above it all, but a man who is convinced Jesus is Lord and Christ, and the Bible is the Word of God. The law of noncontradiction is true, but only because there is truth. God's Word is true. The Bible is sure in a day of troubles. It's a stronghold and won't change with the times and seasons. When the world is passing around falsehoods, rumors, and hunches, it's a must for God's people to rest in God’s truth. All men are liars. Trust God's sure and true promises. Pick up God's Word and ground yourself in a trustworthy word.

Young Men, Study Your Bible

Titus 2:6-8  Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded … in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity.  

Young men, you need to read and study your Bible. There is much that can and does occupy your time and your mind, but it is vitally important for you to know doctrine and be sound in the faith. Young man, study your Bible because God has commanded it. Doctrine is not something only the preacher needs to know. It's telling that when a young man knows the Word of God and is grounded in doctrine, everyone tells him he ought to be a preacher. The problem with that view, is the assumption that you don't have to know doctrine if you are not a preacher. Whether or not you preach the word, you may have or will have a young wife, and young children who are going to look to you for spiritual guidance. They will look to you for wisdom, understanding, and advice. As a man, you need to be able to answer and help them truthfully. You will have people looking to you to lead them and how terrible to not know where you are going yourself.

Now is the time to start. Ecclesiastes 12:1, "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." As a young man, you have the time, the energy and the mental capacity to study and remember great amounts of information. You can memorize the names of ball players and statistics, know the genealogies and story arcs of all the Marvel superheroes, or know every lyric to every country song on the radio. But don't let this season of strength and ability pass without studying God's Word and learning true doctrine. Now is the time to remember your Creator.

Young man, study your Bible to have a pure doctrine. An impure theology will give you a wrong understanding of God, and indeed, perhaps a wrong gospel, which is no gospel at all.  To study doctrine should be for the goal of knowing God.  And, for God's people, doctrine should inform practice. The child of God should live out what they believe. Knowing about God, salvation, future things, the church should inform how the man lives his life. Psalms 119:9, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word."

Young man, study your Bible with gravity and sincerity. This is God's Word, after all. The Bible isn't a text book, nor is it a literature book that you have to cram before the day of your test. So when you read your Bible, you should be sincere and serious about it. Adam Clarke wrote, this type of doctrine would, "[Mix] nothing with the truth; taking nothing from it; adding nothing to it; and exhibiting it in all its connection, energy, and fullness.

Psalms 19:7  ...the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.

You should read your Bible everyday because it's sure. It's firm and established. "The science is settled!" Until it's not, or until they change their mind or find evidence to the contrary. That's the thing about science, its based on observation. Settled science can change based on new information. I read an article last week on theories of why airplanes stay in the air. We can fly all over the world and can design airplanes, but we aren't 100% sure of the reason why they stay in the air.  

God's word is firm. It's settled in Heaven. God's testimony isn't going to change. I change. My body changes. My feelings change. My circumstances change. The world around me changes. But God's word, God's promises, God's testimony are sure. He's not going to change. He's not going be proven wrong. He's not going to go back on his word. Read something sure.

Read something that can give you wisdom. The sure testimonies of God can make a simple one, void of understanding wise. I've read some books where I feel like they made me dummer for having finished them. I've tossed some books in the trash because I KNEW if I kept reading I would be worse off for it, and if I contributed nothing else to society, at least someone wouldn't read that copy. The Bible is good for your soul. It will give you wisdom. Read it. 

Converting the Soul

Psalms 19:7  The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul.

You should read the Bible because of it's power to covert the soul. Conversion isn't limited to the moment when the Lord saves you. Conversion means to turn to the Lord (Psalm 22:27), to restore the soul (Psalm 23:3), to rescue the soul (Psalm 35:17). It's to be brought back to right fellowship (James 5:19; Luke 22:32). The born again believer can be converted when we are out of fellowship with the Lord Jesus, or when we have fallen in sin, error,  or when we have grown cold in our soul. Those who wander away from the Lord first wander away from the Word or receiving the benefit of the Word.

Read your Bible with faith. It's more important to receive truth and hear the Lord when you read than to check off the daily reading. There is no law that says you must read the Bible in 365 days, so if you come to a passage where you need to stop and pray and repent and meditate, do that. Feed your soul with the perfect word that can convert the soul.

The Word is Perfect

Psalms 19:7-11  The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul

We’ve entered into a new month. Time to flip the calendar and notice February is different this year than last year, we have an extra day.  The days are getting a little longer. The winter is dragging on here in West Virginia.  One thing that hasn’t, doesn’t, and never will change is God’s Word. I hope you are still reading your Bible every day. You should because it's perfect.

The Bible is perfect. Perfection means God’s Word can’t get any truer or better than it already is, otherwise, it wouldn’t be perfect. And, it also means it can’t get any worse. I listened to a podcast this week about War and Peace, one of the best novels ever written. But, it’s not perfect, by any stretch. It was written by a man with limited understanding. It was written by a man who had a sin nature and saw the world through fallen eyes. Though it could be one of the pinnacles of man’s work, it isn’t perfect.

God’s Word is true, in every aspect. No other book will give you unadulterated truth. You can trust the perfection of God’s Word. It will never lie to you. It will never lead you astray. It will never give you wrong information. It will never be disproven by science. It will never be proven false by archaeologist.

Read your Bible and believe it’s perfect. Beware of men who constantly are telling you what’s wrong with your Bible. Read your Bible and believe what it says. Study to make sure you understand what it says, but don’t come to the perfect law of the Lord with the idea you need to correct what God says. Read your Bible and trust what it says.

Read your Bible, it's profitable

2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness

It's the fourth Monday of the year, and I hope you've been reading your Bible. If not, today's a great day to begin again.

You should read your Bible everyday because it’s profitable. I’m not asking you to do something that’ll waste your time. I’m asking you to do something that will be for your own good. Reading the Bible will profit your soul.

It’s profitable for learning doctrine. If you read your Bible, you'll learn truth about yourself, about God, about the world, about the end of the world, and about the world to come. Have you ever made a bad decision in life because you didn't have all the facts? Think about the profit of knowing truth about your own heart! Truth about God! Truth about why we are on this Earth and what happens when we die.

It’s profitable to tell you the truth about yourself. God will correct you when you read the Bible. That’s chastisement and discipline, and that’s good for you. When you don’t read the Bible you are not listening to your God. As a father, I come from a long tradition of men, who for about 6,000 years or so, have children who from time to time, don't listen to what I tell them. When that happens, I have to take the discipline up a notch. It's much easier for children to listen to correction and then make the correction than to ignore it and endure the next step. Reading your Bible, receiving correction, is the first gentle step of rebuke from a loving Father.

It’s profitable to tell you how to live and instruction in righteousness. The whole world is ready to tell you how to live. What you should wear, what you should drive, what you should eat, how you should think, and much of it is destructive. But when you read your Bible, God is instructing you in how to live.

It’s profitable for a future day. You might read something tomorrow morning, that doesn’t apply to your life in any way, shape or form. But who knows what the next day will bring? When tragedy comes, it’s too late to start a systematic Bible study to figure what to believe. Consider Job. When the horrors of that terrible day came upon him, he leaned on the truth he learned in happier days. Read your Bible in the sunshine, and it will pray it will bear fruit in a needful day to come.

Read your Bible, it’s profitable.

Inspiration

2 Timothy 3:16  All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:  (17)  That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

This is the third Monday of the year. I hope you are keeping up your Bible reading. Whether you are reading through the Bible in the whole year or not, I hope you are picking up God's Word every day and feeding your soul with the only book given by inspiration of God. No New York Times Bestseller comes by inspiration. No Facebook post, no blog article, no news story comes by inspiration of the Holy One. No other book will give you God's Word. No other book will you find God speaking to you.

And to close this article out, I'll repost something I wrote here a while back.

"The Holy Scriptures are our letter from home."  So wrote Augustine about the inspired Word of God. When I say inspired, I don't mean the writers of Scripture gazed upon a beautiful mountain one early spring morning and then were inspired to write. No, the Scriptures are God breathed. Men penned the Words God spoke as they were "moved" by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:16-21). People, not just helped by the Spirit, or guided by the Spirit, but moved and carried along by the Spirit of God, so what they wrote was not theirs, but God's. 

The Bible was written over a 2,000 year period by 40 different people.  Kings and cupbearers, prophets and priests, fishermen and farmers, scholars and slaves all carried along by the Holy Spirit to write the very words of the Lord. They wrote different genres; history, letters, poetry, and prophesy. They wrote from different places under various circumstances; in times of prosperity, and dominance, times of bondage and suffering.  And through it all, the amazing thing is there isn't any disagreement in the message. From Moses to John, from Genesis to Revelation, there is no discrepancy in the message of the Bible. How is that possible, so many men from so many different walks of life? Because they are not the words of men, but the words of God Himself. You'll find no inconsistency in message because there is one author of the book -- God.
"All scripture is give by inspiration of God" and He didn't give the ideas and let the men fill in the blanks. God gave every word - every part of speech, in every chapter and verse, just the way he wanted it. Our creator revealed the truth about Him and about us. How can we know the mind of God, unless God tells us (1 Corinthians 2:10-13)? When you read your Bible, you are reading what the Holy Spirit is teaching you. "All scripture is give by inspiration of God" and not just the parts we like. The Old Testament is just as much God's Word as the New. The Words in red are not more God's Word than the black.  So many people want to hear from God. Today, we have more access to Bibles in the United States than any other people in history. Yet, week after week, people cry out for "a word from the Lord." You have a word from God, it is your Bible! Love this precious book. A living book that speaks to us. An active book that comforts us. A relevant book for guidance in your life. How fast we search all over creation to get wisdom, when we have God's Word. Don't leave it on the shelf, hide it in your heart. God spoke to us in His Word!

Read a book that does something

You ought to read your Bible every day because of what the Bible is able to do. 2 Timothy 3:15-17,  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.  The Scriptures are able to make one wise unto salvation. I think a few minutes a day reading about the wisdom of God, the hidden mysteries of eternal redemption, and the way of eternal life is time well spent.

What about the Old Testament? All those stories and histories and genealogies and complicated names, why should you read them? The Scriptures Timothy learned were the Old Testament Scriptures! The Old Testament is just as truly the Word of God as the New. They were written for your examples (1 Corinthians 10:11), they were written for our time (1 Peter 1:11-12), and they were written to testify of Jesus (Luke 24:27).

The Scriptures Timothy read had real power. No other book has the power the Bible has. Life changing power. Soul changing power. Holy Spirit, effectual power. Paul reminded Timothy of the Scriptures power in his own life. There is often great debate about which works of literature belong in the list of great works. But only time will tell what future generations will hold as important and those works that will last. But in the Word of God, we have a book that has been tried and tested for millenia, and one you ought to read.

You Can Read Your Bible

Last week, I encouraged you to read the Bible everyday in 2020. Hopefully you took my charge, but if you didn't, then I'm going to charge you to start today. And, Lord willing, I'm going to keep on encouraging you every Monday this year. My plan is to offer a brief encouragement each week for daily Bible reading.

It says in  2 Timothy 3:15, "And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures" and what I want you to keep in mind is that's possible for you to read the Bible and know the Scriptures. Don't let the size of the book and the profundity of the content keep you from the fact that you can know the Scriptures. Timothy knew the holy scriptures from a child and he was taught by his mother and grandmother. 

 It doesn’t matter how old or how young you are, the Bible can be read and it can be known. What other book can offer such deep matter that the best minds in all of history have given themselves to the study of this book, and "a child can know the holy Scriptures." There is no other book on Earth that is accessible to children but profound beyond all measure to the greatest minds. There is no other book on Earth that can literally provide a lifelong pursuit of his wisdom.  A book for Kings and children.

Read your Bible.