THE BIBLE

Theme: “The Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God.  It is the final standard for doctrine and conduct.”

The Bible is not just a pile of information like an encyclopedia.  It is a unique book because it doesn’t just tell you about life, it is life!

John 6:63:
“It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.”

Hebrews 4:12:
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

It doesn’t just contain the truth, it is truth!

Psalm 119:42:
…And Your law is truth.

John 17:17:
Sanctify them (means “set them apart”) by Your truth.  Your word is truth.

It doesn’t just tell you about the power of God, it is the power of God!

Romans 10:16:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes…

Just as bread is food for your natural man, the Bible (God’s Word) is food for your spirit man.

Luke 4:4:
But Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’”

Most people, however, do too good a job feeding their natural man while starving their spirit man. It is simply impossible to be spiritually strong without feeding on God’s Word regularly.  This does not just mean hearing the Bible preached and taught at church. In fact, it is your responsibility to read the Bible for yourself and determine if the teaching you get lines up with it, though almost nobody these days does.  People wonder how someone like Jim Jones or the Wacko in Waco could get so many followers, but it’s because some people don’t do what the Bereans did:

Acts 17:11:
These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

It’s not enough to know that the preacher believes it. You have to know what the Bible says for yourself so that you can believe it yourself.  In the Dark Ages, the common people couldn’t have Bibles, and people who published them sometimes found themselves burned at the stake!  Thank God, you have easy access to the Bible today.  But just as I can’t eat a hot fudge sundae for you, I can’t feed on the Bible for you, either. You need to feed yourself on God’s Word.

The Bible is not just a bunch of opinions from different people. The Bible itself claims to be inspired by God (God-breathed):

2 Timothy 3:16-17:
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 complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

1 Thessalonians 2:13:
For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.

2 Peter 1:20-21:
knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

Hearing what the Bible says is the way to develop your faith!

Romans 10:17:
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Hearing what the Bible says will make you wise about your salvation!

2 Timothy 3:15:

and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

Man spends much of his time trying to lay up money, but God’s Word is worth far more than money, so it deserves our time!

Psalm 119:72:
The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of coins of gold and silver.

Psalm 119:127:
Therefore I love your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold!

(Personal questions for contemplation: Do you see God’s word that way? Do you prioritize your time that way? Do you see God’s Word as being worth more than money or simply a means to believe for and get money?)

Peter, a contemporary of Paul, acknowledged that some of Paul’s writings were considered Scripture at the time:

2 Peter 3:16:
as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of those things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

Note: We would have to accept even a passage like 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 (starting with “But to the rest I, not the Lord, say…”) as inspired by God, since we believe that all Scripture, including this passage, is God-breathed. Paul did not feel he could state it as a “So says the Lord”kind of prophecy, but it was still the Lord speaking through him.

The chapter and verse divisions – AND (interestingly enough) the punctuation and capitalizations, were not in the original manuscripts – they were added by man later for convenience. It is not necessary to know the chapter and verse of a particular promise for you to believe it and act on it – but you have to know it’s there. Then, when you want to help other people – which we hope you do! – it is good to know chapter and verse so that you can show other people in their own Bibles what God says about a certain subject.

While it is common (in some churches) to make Sunday School children memorize the order of books in the Bible, it is not necessary to do so to be a strong Christian. I admit that if I had to list all the books in the Old Testament in order, I would probably mess up Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and most of the Minor Prophets at the end! That’s why they make the Index!  Or you can just flip until you find it, which I’m more prone to doing myself.  The important thing is to know what is in there, not what order it is in.

You should study the Bible with an open mind to find out what it really says.  You should not start with what you’d like it to say and then try to find Scripture to back yourself up. You can probably find some Scripture out of context to support your view, but anyone who knew the rest of what is written would know you were wrong.  After all, the devil misquoted Scripture to Jesus in Luke 4:, but Jesus wasn’t snookered by it, because He knew the Scriptures!  The devil said, “He shall give His angels charge over you to keep you, and, In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone,” to try to entice Jesus to commit suicide by jumping off a high building. He seemed to have Scripture to back up his idea! How many of us would have known that the devil was misquoting Psalm 91:11-12, which actually reads like this: “For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways [the devil conveniently left out the part that would have proved his temptation false, since jumping off high buildings is not one of our normal “ways” during the day]. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”  And Jesus knew what was also written, that you shall not put the Lord to a foolish test.

Jesus’ only answer to the devil was “It is written.” He did not get into intellectual arguments with the devil, and neither should you.  The devil has been around longer than you, and he has had lots of practice with intellectual arguments.  The way you respond to his temptations is the same way Jesus did, by quoting Scripture.  “It is written…!”

If you find yourself wanting to act contrary to the Bible, the Bible is right and you are wrong. One mark of maturity is acting on the Word instead of on your emotions.

Some people are frustrated because they think they never hear from God.  But when you read the Bible, you hear from God!  If you are solid about what God has said to everyone through the Bible, it will help you discern when it is God speaking to you about specific personal matters.

Remember:  The Holy Spirit moved men to write the Bible, and He never contradicts Himself. If you ever feel like “the Spirit” has told you something and the Bible says otherwise, it was not the HOLY Spirit who told you that thing! Some people claim that God has said all kinds of outlandish things to them, but if God is speaking, He will agree with His Word.

Some people say “God is sovereign” and mean by it that God can make exceptions to His promises according to His whims – for example, He might not heal you because He might make an exception in your case in His sovereignty.  This is like saying that God is a liar; that He will keep His Word for some and then make “sovereign” exceptions for others.  This is a faith-killing teaching that robs men and demeans God.  God does not break His Word!  “Forever O Lord, your word is settled in heaven.” (Psalm 119:89) God IS sovereign, but it is His sovereignty that guarantees that when you act on His Word, there is no other being in the universe that can stop God from fulfilling His promise.

Here is a list from Psalm 119 of what the Bible (God’s Word) will do for you when you take heed to it:

It will (verse numbers in parentheses):

• Make you blessed when you do it (2)
• Stop you from being ashamed when you do it (5-6)
• Incite you to praise God (7, 164, 171)
• Cleanse your way (9)
• Stop you from sinning against God when you lay it up in your heart (11)
• Avoid cursing and rebuke, reproach and contempt (21-22)
• Counsel you (24)
• Revive you (25, 107, 154, 159)
• Strengthen you (28)
• Enlarge your heart (32)
• Give you an answer for him who reproaches you (42)
• Make you walk at liberty (45)
• Let you speak of God’s testimonies before kings and not be ashamed (46)
• Comfort you in your affliction (50, 52, 76)
• Give you life (50, 93)
• Give you songs (54)
• Make other believers glad to see you (74)
• Stop you from perishing in your affliction (92, 153,170)
• Make you wiser than your enemies (98)
• Give you more understanding than all your teachers (99)
• Make you understand more than the ancients (100)
• Give you understanding (104, 169)
• Make you hate every false way (104, 128)
• Be a lamp to your feet and a light to your path (105)
• Uphold you (116)
• Make you avoid having God reject you (118)
• Give you light (130)
• Give understanding to the simple (130)
• Direct your steps (133)
• Give you great peace (165)
• Make it so that nothing causes you to stumble (offends you) (165)
   

Question 2-1: What are the Apocrypha, and why are they in Catholic Bibles and not in Protestant Bibles?

The Apocrypha consists of a number of books found between Malachi and Matthew. These books were determined a long time ago at a council of Christian leaders to be unreliable because they contained fabricated stories and did not seem in harmony with the other Scriptures.
 

Question 2-2: What about the Lost Books of the Bible published by the Readers’ Digest?

They should have STAYED lost.  I have been through some of them, and they are plainly inventions of men because they contradict the other Scriptures.  These are not the same as the Apocrypha. They have silly stories about Jesus supposedly changing the color of a woman’s dress as a child and other “childhood miracle” stories that contradict the plain teaching of John 2:11 that Jesus did not do any miracles until He was around 30 years old and He had been baptized with the Holy Spirit in the River Jordan.
 

Question 2-3: What about the Book of Mormon?

The Book of Mormon is fake Scripture fabricated by a man named Joseph Smith, though there is considerable evidence he “lifted” some of it from fictional work by a man named Solomon Spaulding. It says on the cover that it is “another testament of Jesus Christ”, but it is not.  It claims that Jesus visited North America, and also claims that blacks are an accursed race, which is why Mormonism has never been popular among African Americans. Some of it was just copied out of the real Bible, and some has “prophecies” written AFTER the fact about Colombus discovering America and a few other such events.
 

Question 2-4: There are so many different Bible versions.  Which one is really the Word of God?

You can find all essential Christian doctrines in any modern version; the differences are almost insignificant though the wording may vary. No one version can claim it is the only valid one.   The original Bible languages were Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Modern translations were translated from those languages. Some versions are paraphrases, not translations.  A translation tries to stay true to the original wording in the original language. A paraphrase tries to express the meaning in easy-to-understand language (and sometimes in “hipper” language), but is subject to the biases of the person doing the paraphrasing.  My personal favorite is the New King James Version; it is a translation that combines faithfulness to the original with readability.

Here are some different versions:

King James Version (also known as Authorized Version) – This is quite faithful to the original but is full of thee’s, thou’s, -eth’s, the word “doth” and similar outmoded language.  Some people think that this is “holy talk” but it’s actually just “archaic talk” since God is quite capable of communicating with people in modern English. Remember, in its day the King James was modern English, not some special holy talk.

New King James Version – A translation similar to the King James, but without all the old Elizabethan English.

Revised Standard Version – Also a translation, in what at the time was more modern language than the King James.

New International Version – Uses more modern language than the King James, but is somewhere between a translation and a paraphrase, since some ideas get in there that are obvious colored by the authors’ interpretations. Very readable, though.

The Living Bible Definitely a paraphrase, not a translation.  Interesting but not a good source to preach doctrine from without checking other sources.

Amplified Version – Gives lots of “alternate” and expanded meanings of key words. A translation that gives additional shades of meaning. Two drawbacks: First, it takes a lot longer to read because it’s longer; second, you can get carried away with an “alternate” rendering in English and you’d best make sure that you have the right meaning before preaching on it.

Message Bible – This paraphrase is probably the “hippest” but also the “loosest” of any of the Bibles mentioned here. It is more like a commentary or sermon on the passages than a real translation of the passages.

WEB Bible – Combines the advantage of the New King James (faithfulness and readability) with the main advantage of the old King James version (the fact that it is public domain, so anyone can copy it, print it, etc. without paying anyone royalties. The New Testament section is available free on this Web site.

Watchtower Bible – This is NOT a real Bible. It is an intentionally doctored Bible published by the Jehovah’s Witnesses to back their Spirit-of-antichrist-inspired error. Avoid this one completely if you know what’s good for you!
 

Question 2-5: Aren’t some portions of the Bible boring and irrelevant, like all those begat-lists?

You’d be surprised.  As we will see, you can use some of those begat-lists to prove the virgin birth from the Old Testament (more on this in a future lesson).  However, I don’t recommend dwelling on the genealogies in your personal Bible reading time or putting a verse like this on your refrigerator:  “And Ahaz begot Jehoaddah, Jehoaddah begot Alemeth, Azmaveth, and Zimri; and Zimri begat Moza” (1 Chronicles 8:36). It is always nice to challenge evolution-believing Christians to specify exactly where the genealogies become false, since you can trace your way all the way from Adam to Jesus Christ.
 

Question 2-6: If someone offered me both a new version of Windows and an old version of Windows, I’d just want the new one, knowing that it is an upgrade of the old one. Therefore, shouldn’t we just throw out our Old Testaments now that we have New Testaments?  Why have something old when you can have something new?

The Old Testament was written for you (“these things were written for our admonition” – 1 Corinthians 10:11), but the New Testament was written to you as a believer.  The animal sacrifice details might interest you and someone probably has figured out the spiritual significance of various rituals and dimensions of things in the Old Testament temple, but it is best to spend more time in the New Testament.  If all you read is the Old Testament for months on end because you want to read through the Bible, you will often find yourself with a distorted view of how God deals with man under grace instead of the law. I spend most of my time in the New Testament, though I have read the Old Testament through several times, too.

Question 2-7: Which of the following is the right way to read the Bible? (a) Cover to cover in order (b) Read some Old Testament and New Testament every day (c) Read one chapter of Proverbs every day (d) Flip it open and expect God to speak through whatever verse you put your finger on (e) by topic (f) other?

The Bible does not specify any “right” method of Bible reading.  THAT you read it is far more important than HOW you read it.  The flip-to-a-verse method can end up being similar to depending on messages in Chinese fortune cookies (except that there are no verses that say, “You enjoy Chinese food”). Let the Holy Spirit lead you.  I favor an approach that at some point will take you through the whole Bible, but there is no God-mandated official timetable for this. Sometimes you might encounter just one verse and take the next few days just “munching” on it because it involves a change God is trying to work in your life.

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