Episode Transcript
Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, Go, therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Welcome to Go Teach all nations, bringing you Christ's teachings through Australian and international speakers.
And here is today's presenter, Alan Fisher. Shall we pray before we commence? Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this little time when we can come aside to consider your word. And we pray that as we do this, there are some things that are hard to be understood, hard for us to get our minds around. We do pray that you will be here by your spirit. Enlighten our minds, help us to understand the wonderful things of your word. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. So we'll turn to second Timothy three, although you don't need to turn to it. I'm sure you know this verse by heart, but we're going to read 2nd Timothy 3:16. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. And keep your Bibles open to that page because we're going to look at the rest of the chapter. It's good to look at texts within their larger context. In the Bible we tend to because the Bible is divided into verses, we tend to pick out individual verses and consider them in isolation. But we need to look at the whole picture of where they're written. And we see here in chapter 3 that Paul begins by saying in verse 1 this know also that in the last days perilous times shall come. And he goes on to describe these perilous times, men shall be lovers of their own selves, boasters, blasphemers, etc. And so what is Paul's instruction for us living in these last days? And then we come down to verse 14. Paul says, but continue there on the things that thou hast learned and has 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. So Paul, speaking of living in the last days and the perilous times, tells us to look at Scripture, but not only that. Not only does he want us to be reading the Scriptures and being grounded in that, but he goes further in verse 16 all scripture is given by inspiration of God. So it's in this last day context that Paul emphasizes the divine origin of Scripture. As we've said, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Now why does Paul emphasize this in the last days. Well, we know that in these days, there's so many people who don't know the Scriptures, don't want to know the Scriptures. And Paul is urging us to be grounded in Scripture, which is given by inspiration of God and has a divine origin. So we're going to look at some terms. We're going to define three aspects to the writing and reception of scriptural truth. The first one is revelation. This is when God speaks to the prophet. The second one is inspiration, how the prophet puts it onto paper and communicates it to the rest of us. And these are the two main things we're going to talk about today. And there is a third one also, illumination, from what the prophet has written or said to us. Sometimes we mix up these last two points. We think we've got inspiration, but it's actually more rightly termed illumination, when the Holy Spirit enables us to understand what has been given through inspiration. So why is it important to understand these things? Well, a misunderstanding of revelation or inspiration or both can lead to misunderstandings in illumination and how we understand the Bible or the rejection of Bible truth altogether. Now, I know people, and I'm sure you do too, who aren't believers. I know a man who says, oh, I've read the Bible, it's all rubbish. He couldn't make head or tail of it. And yeah, this sometimes comes from a misunderstanding of how the Bible was given. Even those who do believe it can misunderstand things in the Scriptures or they find things that don't seem to match with their faulty understanding, and so they reject the Bible altogether. And you probably know people who've come into that category too. So it's hard for us to understand any of this. We're trying to explain God's working in human terms. And as Deuteronomy 29:29 says, the secret things belong unto the Lord our God. So we don't want to pry into the secret things, but those things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever. And I'd suggest that they're important. The fact that God has revealed them to us shows that they are important. But as we said, it's hard to define these exact terms. One writer says that defining inspiration is like catching a rainbow. When we have put forth our best efforts, there will remain an elusive factor, an element of mystery. So we'll never understand everything. But some things about this are clearly shown in the Bible, and they are important. And so we want to try to understand them. And that's what we hope to do. Today. So we spoke about Revelation, which is when God speaks to his messenger, when God speaks to the prophet, like we heard in the children's story today. God spoke to Moses on the mountain. And then there's various ways that God speaks to, to his prophets, to his messengers. There's visible appearances of God. And I've put there a few examples from Genesis of Abraham. Let's have a look at one or two of those. Genesis 17. We can't look up all the verses. 17:1, and when Abram was 90 years old and 9, the Lord appeared to Abram. Abram and said to him, I am the Lord God walk before me and be thou perfect. And we turn to the next chapter in the first verse. And the Lord appeared to him. This is to Abram in the plains of Mamre as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. So sometimes God comes in visible appearance to, to people, to his messengers. Another method is through visions. And of course, the one that comes to mind is Daniel. I mean, there's many people out there in the Bible who mention visions. We'll look at a couple of examples. Daniel 2:19. Remember when King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and couldn't remember it and Daniel prayed to the Lord about it. And in verse 19 it says, Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. And so God sometimes speaks to his messengers through prophets, sometimes through visions, sometimes it's by direct speech. Well, we've heard about that this morning. The giving of the ten Commandments. God spoke it direct to Moses and in fact, he wrote it down. He didn't even leave Moses to write it. God himself wrote that on tables of stone. Sometimes God speaks to his prophets through angels. Let's have a look at a couple of examples. We've got Genesis 32:1, which is another familiar story. Jacob. And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. So sometimes God has spoken through angels. We'll go back to Daniel and yeah, we've been reading the Book of Daniel at home. This chapter, and it's very interesting. Daniel 10, 11, 12, Daniel's saying. Or in verse 10, he says how a hand touched him. And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved. Understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright, for unto thee am I now sent. Then said he unto me, fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard. And I am Come for thy words. And that was the angel who identifies himself as Gabriel. He was sent to help Daniel to understand another method by which God has revealed himself. We just sang about this in the hymn. If we look in the book of Hebrews, this is an easy verse to find. Hebrews 1. One God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, as in other versions, saying many in various ways, spoken unto the fathers in the time past, spoken time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son. So this is another method that God has revealed his message to his people through his Son, Jesus Christ. And so those are all different methods of revelation. So now we come to inspiration. Remember, revelation is God speaking to the prophet, to his messenger. Inspiration is the prophet speaking to others. So there's three main views that people have of inspiration. One is verbal inspiration, or we could call it dictation. There are some who think that God came to the prophet and just gave him the words. That was it. As though the prophet was just a typewriter. They don't have typewriters now, a computer printer. And the prophet had no part in it. God gave the very words and dictated them to him. That's one view. Another view is thought inspiration. That is that God gives the prophet the thoughts, impresses them on his heart, and then the prophet writes it out in his own words with God's help. They're the two main views. There's another view that's abroad in this postmodern age. Encounter inspiration. Now, this is a. This is a bit of a strange one. The folk who hold this view hold that the prophet has some encounter with God and then the prophet writes things down. And it might not even be true, but it's what the prophet thought. And in this one, the words that are written come entirely from the human being, not from God. So we can imagine this on a. A spectrum, on a continuum of. At the one end, there's verbal inspiration. That view which says that God dictated the message, in its extreme form, says that God dictated the message and the prophet just had no say in it. On the bottom line, it says what's written down is. Under the verbal inspiration view, everything that's written down is divine, given exactly by God. At the other end of the spectrum, as we've just said, is the encounter view, which says that what was written down was just human, just what the prophet experienced and thought and wrote down. And then in between, we have thought inspiration. And as you'll see, there's a. Under that, what's written as a combination of the divine and the human. God gives the thoughts and the human messenger writes it down. And it's shown here on a line, on a spectrum, a continuum. There's various people hold different views of different proportions of it. So what we want to find out is these different views. But what does the Bible reveal about it? What does the Bible tell us about how God inspired the prophets? So we'll start by comparing the Gospels. And as you know, there's four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Are these all the same? No. Somebody says no, you might have a book like this or you might have seen one, or your Bible might have the form of it in the back. This book's called A Harmony of the Gospels. And what the compiler has done, he's got four columns. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And he has the matching pieces from the different Gospels in the columns as each one wrote it. And you can see that there's slight differences between them. Some of the columns are shorter and longer. Some of them. There aren't any columns. Some. There's only one column because there was only one gospel writer who wrote that part. And it's very interesting, a book like this, to go through and read the different accounts in the Gospels. This is a page out of the back of the book. This is just an example, the Mayan parables that Jesus told. And I don't know whether you can read the writing, but on that side it lists the name of the parable. And then there's columns for Matthew, Mark and Luke. And the last column is for the page that it's on in the book. But you'll see that there's some parables are in every one of those three Gospels. There's some parables that are only in one, some are in two. So not every gospel writer recorded every parable. Question from that chart, how many are there in the Book of John? How many parables? There's none. It's not there. John didn't mention the parables. So if we only had the Book of John, we wouldn't know that Jesus had ever said any parables. But we have the four different Gospels. Go back to this. So why do we have four Gospels? It's a bit like if you had an object that was photographed. Say we had a car and we photographed it from the front. Well, that's good. But some cars. There was a. Like the one I've got, they made it as a sedan, a station wagon or a utility. So if you just had the photo taken from the Front. Well, you know, some. You know that it's a. It's that model car. But you wouldn't know whether it's a station wagon or a sedan or a ute. But if you had a photo taken from each side of it, you'd get a much better view. You'd know exactly what it is, you know, whether it's a station wagon or whatever. So it's a bit like that with the Gospels. By having four gospels, it's like four different photographs, and you get a more complete picture, but there's little differences between them. Here's what it says, the inscription that was written over the cross. And if you read those, each one of them is different. So do you think, did the spirit get mixed up when he told the different Gospel writers what to write? No, Each one wrote it down as he remembered it. The things that struck him, a bit like our three writers this morning. Each one noticed slightly different things in that box. And so we can say that the four Gospels are complementary and not contradictory. Now, I'm going to give you a little English lesson. Complementary is a word that's often confused or misspelled. There's another one that has an I after the L. That's if somebody gives you a compliment, you know, if I say you're a good fellow, that's a compliment. But if one thing is the complement of another, it means that the two matches like, no, that's not it. What have I done with it? Here we are. Here's a clothes peg. And you see, it's got two halves, and sometimes these get separated and it's not much use for holding your clothes on the line. But the two halves of the peg are complementary. One complements the other. You have to have the two of them for it to work like a pair of scissors, you know, you need both blades. So the Gospels are complementary. Each one adds a little bit to the story. They're not contradictory. They don't contradict one another. Even though it may be in different words. This statement explains it a bit more clearly. Why do we need a Matthew, a Mark, a Luke, a John, a Paul, and all the writers who have borne testimony in regard to the life and ministry of the Savior? Why could not one of the disciples have written a complete record and thus have given us a connected account of Christ's earthly life? Why does one writer bring in points that another writer does not mention? Why, if these points are essential, did not all these writers mention them? It is because the minds of men differ. Not all comprehend things in exactly the same way certain scripture truths appeal much more strongly to the minds of some than of others. And so by having the four complementary accounts, we get a more complete account. And also there's things in the different ones that appeal to different people. And so it's the same, that was an example with the Gospels. It's the same with the whole. The whole Bible. Written in different ages by men who differed widely in rank and occupation and in mental and spiritual endowments. The books of the Bible present a wide contrast in style as well as a diversity in the nature of the subjects unfolded. Different forms of expression are employed by different writers. Often the same truth is more strikingly presented by one than another. And as several writers present a subject under varied aspects and relations, they may appear to the superficial, careless or prejudiced reader to be discrepancy or contradiction, where the thoughtful reverence student with clearer insight discerns the underlying harmony. Here's another similar quote. As presented through different individuals, the truth is brought out in its varied aspects. This is the following paragraph. One writer is more strongly impressed with one phase of the subject. He grasps these points that harmonize with his experience with his power of perception and appreciation. Another seizes upon a different phase, and each, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, presents what is most forcibly impressed upon his own mind. A different aspect of the truth in each, but a perfect harmony through all. And the truths thus revealed unite to form a perfect whole adapted to meet the wants of men and all the circumstances and experiences of life. You remember Luke was a doctor, a medical doctor, the beloved physician, it refers to him as. And he wrote things that appeal to his mind. He has some miracles, I think, some of the healings and so on. He gives more details because naturally that's what he saw. When he saw a sick person, he noticed the details, being a doctor. So we mentioned those three different views of inspiration. Verbal inspiration, thought inspiration, or encounter. Let's see which of those views matches what we've seen in the Bible thus far. And going back to the charts we had, we said everything's a little bit different so that there's differences between the different books and the different writers. So that doesn't agree with the idea of verbal inspiration. Because if God just dictated the words, how could there be any differences between them? So that rules out verbal inspiration. This encounter inspiration, where they say that the prophet had an encounter with God and he wrote out his own ideas. Well, that doesn't match either. We read over here in Second Peter, isn't it? Second Peter, Second Peter I always get this verse mixed up where it says that. Now I've even got my pages mixed up. Anyway, you know the verse where it says that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. So it wasn't just their own ideas, like the encounter view, it was as they were moved by the Holy Ghost that God they spake and write. So that leaves us with thought inspiration. And thought inspiration best matches our view of the Gospels. So our sermon title today was from Revelation 1:11, where John the Revelator was told what you see right in a book. And so as we saw with our three seers and writers this morning, God gave them a view, told them what it was, and then the various writers wrote it out in their own words. But as we've said, there are some differences, some apparent differences. What do we do with these apparent differences? Well, as we've said, some people, they have a wrong idea of inspiration and they say, oh, there's differences, it must be all wrong. It doesn't agree with itself. But the illuminated soul sees a spiritual unity, one grand golden thread running through the whole. But it requires patience, thought and prayer to trace out the precious golden thread. Some parts of the Bible were written by verbal dictation. We could say, like we've said, that the Ten Commandments, that was written by God himself. But in the rest of it. Well, there's other places too in the Bible where it says, you know, thus saith the Lord. The Lord said this. I counted up, I think I searched for the phrase thus saith the Lord. I think it comes in the old testament about 400 times. So there's, you know, direct quotes where God gave them the exact words. But then in other places, the prophet was given the thoughts and told to write it down. But of course, this doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit abandons the prophet once he's communicated the message to him and leaves him totally to himself to select the words. Remember, we read from 2nd Peter that holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, 2nd Peter 2:1. And so some have referred to this as whole person inspiration. God guides too in the writing of it. But as we've seen thus far, each writer writes in his own way and his own style sometimes. Or as we've said, the writers weren't robots, they weren't just set there like computer printers, but they wrote it in their own words, in their own way, as it according to their background and their thinking. So there's various different methods that we use Various different aspects of inspiration. And we'll put some of these in the first one. Well, this is one we don't usually think of with inspiration, but the first one is research. Let's have a look at the book of Luke. If we turn to the first, the very first verses in Luke, Luke says he's writing to a fellow Theophilus, which was a good Greek name. That's another thing. Luke was tended to be writing for the Gentiles. He says, forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. It seemed good to me also having had a perfect understanding of all things from the very beginning, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed. So Luke here says that many have been telling the story of Christ, those who were eyewitnesses. And so he decided to put it all together into a coherent whole. We'll come back to that. There's the book of Luke, the books of first and Second Chronicles. You read them. They refer to such. They refer to other books, such as the book of the books of the Chronicles of Israel and the books of the Chronicles of Judah. So the writer evidently looked up the records to find the various historical events. The next method that can be used by the prophets is compilations. The Psalms, for example, are a compilation, excuse my misspelling of Psalms. We know that, don't we? You look at the Psalms. Many were written by David, some were written by Asaph, some were written by. Were once written by Moses. But some good soul under inspiration compiled them all into one book of Psalms, the book of Proverbs. There's several chapters toward the end of Proverbs where it mentions how they were proverbs of different writers. In fact, one of them, it says it was compiled in the time of hezekiah in chapter 25, these proverbs of Solomon, which the king, the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah, copied out, and so forth. So, yeah, we've mentioned compilations, research. We mentioned, we mentioned Luke and the book of first and Second Chronicles. Going back to that one, I missed out Daniel. Remember Daniel nine, Daniel nine, two. He said, I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah that he would accompany accomplished 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem. So Daniel was doing his research. And the Lord gave him visions as well to answer his questions. Sometimes prophets have used secretaries and assistants. And you'll remember that Jeremiah had Baruch to write it out for him. Paul had various writers which it mentions by name. If we go to the book of romans, verse chapter 16, and we go to verse 22, it says, I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord. So Paul, you say, had bad eyesight and yeah, he got someone to help him to write it out. Tertius wrote it out for him in Galatians. He says at the end of that, see how large letters I'm making with my own hand. And so he had somebody to write most of it, but he wrote that bit himself at the end. In First Peter, it mentions Sylvanus, who was Peter's helper, who wrote it down first Peter 5:12, by Silvanus, A faithful brother unto you, etc. And sometimes so we've got research, compilations, secretaries and assistants. Sometimes prophets have quoted from other writers. And we've got some examples here, First Corinthians and Titus, Paul speaks from, quotes other writers. One of them he says, certain of your own poets, he quotes a line from that. And then in these books of first Kings and Chronicles, it refers to other books that are mentioned. We've already mentioned the books of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah and the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel. And he mentions other writers, the book of Nathan and the book of Gad and the book of Iddo and some books that aren't preserved today. But sometimes as they wrote out what they'd seen, the prophets drew on the works of other writers. And so we find the there's various parallel accounts as we've mentioned. And one writer says that this is the key to understanding inspiration. The various parallel passages, looking at them and comparing them. So why is a correct understanding of revelation and inspiration important to us? Well, one, it gives us confidence in the Bible as we've said, some people find discrepancies and find that the prophet didn't write in the way they thought and it shakes their confidence in the Bible. But if we have a correct understanding of how God revealed things to the prophets and how they wrote, helps us to have confidence in the Bible. Another one is reason is that the Bible is for everyone. Thoughts can be translated into any language. Now any of you have learned to tried to learn another language, know that there's not one exact word in each language that matches one exact word in another. So it's hard to translate actual Words but thoughts can be put into any language. Now, there are some who believe that the. Well, not the Bible, but there are some holy books considered holy in our world that are not like this. The Koran, they say, was given in Arabic. Their story is that that's the language of the angels or the language of heaven or something. And so they don't recognize any translation as authentic, only the original Arabic. I heard a man speak once who had been brought up in Islam, and he said they had to learn phrases in Arabic. They didn't even know what it was about, what it meant. But that was considered the very thing that couldn't be. The words couldn't be changed, couldn't be translated. I worked with a fellow once who came from a country in Asia where there's a large Islamic majority. And I said to him once, where can I get a copy of the Koran in English? He said, oh, no, no, no, you could not have. In English, no. I thought he was just joking. But I found later on that that's true. They don't recognize any other language translation except the Arabic. Well, the Bible's not like that. The Bible was written by thought, inspiration and thoughts can be translated into English or Chinese or Greek or whatever, and the thought can be put into the words of that language. And another reason why this understanding is important is that it puts God's signature on the Bible. It's characteristic of his way of working. God works through people. The plan of salvation doesn't. It is all about cooperation, the human cooperating with the divine. And we could add, witnessing too. Why does God call on people to tell others about Him? God could send an angel to everybody in the world to tell them about him if he wanted to. But God, in his wisdom, has seen that he needs to do it through human beings. And so it's the same with inspiration. God works through human beings. And as we mentioned earlier, one writer here says, without a correct understanding of biblical revelation and inspiration, one stands on unstable ground, vulnerable to misinterpreting divine truth. And when people find what they think are discrepancies and so on, it shakes their faith. And we've known people who've given up the truth because of that. A good example of this is this man that most of you will know, William Miller. You remember that William Miller as a boy was brought up as a Christian, but in his young adulthood he got in league with skeptics and deists and they held this view that the Bible is all full of discrepancies and it doesn't make sense and can't be understood. I remember a quote from him. He said, I thought that the Bible was just the work of designing men, so I discarded it accordingly. And so Miller was like that for some years until he realized his need for a savior. You know the story. If you don't, we can talk about it another time. But Miller became a Christian and believed the Bible. But his skeptic friend said to him, oh, they brought up all these arguments, you know, the Bible's full of discrepancies and contradictions. How can you believe that? And he had to have an answer for them. So he started a systematic study of the Bible. And after he'd been through that, he said, I was thus satisfied that the Bible is a system of revealed truths. So clearly and simply given that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. It says, link after link in the chain of truth rewarded his efforts as step by step he traced down the great lines of prophecy. Angels of heaven were guiding his mind and opening the Scriptures to his understanding. And when he'd finished his study, learning it all the hard way, studying it for himself, said, I was constrained to admit that the Scriptures must be a revelation from God. They became my delight. And in Jesus I found a friend. And so that's how it is with us today. It's for us to search the Bible out and to find that chain of truth that's in it and to taste and see that the Lord is good. And as we search His Word and see how it all fits together. Now, I don't claim that this little talk is the last word on all of this. As I've said, there's much that it's hard for us to understand, but I hope that it will inspire you, to encourage you to study into this for yourself and to see how the Bible is indeed God's trustworthy word. Our Father in Heaven, we thank youk for your wonderful word. As we've thought for a few minutes this morning about how the Bible was given, there's so much that it's hard for us to understand, but we pray that yout'll help us to grasp these truths and to understand how youw work and to understand you'd wonderful plan of salvation where you cooperate with the human, cooperating with the divine. And we think of Jesus who came divine and yet he took human form. And how you've given the Bible in the same way, your divine Word written in human words. We thank you for it. Help us to understand your Word. Help and help us to read it and as William Miller did, to find in the Bible a chain of truth. This message was made available by the Dora Creek Seventh Day Adventist Church. For more resources like this, visit Doracreek.church. This program has been brought to you by 3 ABN Australia radio.
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