How To Understand And Apply The Bible, Lesson 2
Welcome to 30 minute classes, a course of 15 Bible lessons, all about 30 minutes each. Our topic for this course is “How to Understand and Apply the Bible.” In this second lesson, we’ll talk about The Bible’s Authority and Inspiration, it’s Inerrancy and Infallibility.
But first, let’s remind ourselves of what was said last time. The last lesson was really just an introduction, where we just gave some direction for the course. We looked at each lesson and gave a brief explanation. Now, I don’t think I’ll repeat all of that here, we’ve got a lot of other stuff to cover. But it will help to just reset a little.
So, we talked about the goal of this course being that we might have our confidence built up regarding our ability to feed ourselves God’s words, and all to feed others, as well. We said that that great verse from Jeremiah would be kinda our verse for this course. You remember it? Jeremiah 15:16, “Your words were found,” Jeremiah says, “and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.” Let’s go ahead and see if we can have that one memorized, because I want you to have that visual, the Bible is something we should crave, something we wanna devour.
And I also, in that last lesson, may have kinda touched a nerve in all of us, just regarding our motivation. I was thinking that we should just go ahead and acknowledge that Bible study is hard work. It’s laborious. Let’s just say it. A lot of times we’re just lazy. I know I am. And we talked about labor, labor before AND after the fall. Remember? We saw that we were created to work. Adam was put in the garden to work it and keep it. And after he fell, that work got even harder, there would be thorns and thistles. So, don’t be surprised if there’s some sweat involved in our studying the Bible.
But let’s see if we can’t be like Paul when he told the Corinthians that “he worked harder than any of them,” harder than the other apostles, and of course in our working harder than the others, also be reminded of how he finished that verse, he said, “though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” So, we’re gonna work hard, but we’re also gonna rely a whole lot on God’s grace.
Alright. So let’s get into Lesson #2. Now, to understand the nature of the God we serve, we have to see him as the God who speaks. God speaks to us.
God is the supreme being of the universe. He doesn’t depend on anyone else. He doesn’t need anybody. He is self-existent. He is ultimate. But, he is also personal. God is a person. He’s not a human person, but he is a person. Or better, he’s three persons. He is one God in three persons. He is Trinity. And the Father loves the Son and the Holy Spirit. And the Son loves the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit loves the Son and the Father. They exist in a personal relationship of love. So God is both ultimate and personal. And that’s important.
That’s actually unique among all the world religions, to be both ultimate and personal. Think about it. We have the religion of Ancient Greece, for example, who believed that we were all under the control of mysterious Fate. Or the Hindu religion, the Brahman is the cosmic soul of the universe, and we’re all a part of its world consciousness. Or even those new age religions whose god is some free-flowing, all-encompassing energy. These religions have an ultimate being. But those ultimate beings aren’t personal. Fate, Cosmic Soul, Energy. They’re ultimate, but they’re not persons—they’re not personal.
Or, on the other hand. Some religions do have personal gods. Think of all those ancient deities in the Bible. The ones that the Israelites were always bowing down to and worshiping. They would offer sacrifices to them, to appease them. They had to appease them because they were personal beings, they were temperamental, they would get angry, so you had to appease them. And even today, in some secular pagan religions like sorcery and witchcraft. Those demons are personal beings. But these gods aren’t ultimate. They have no real power; rather they’re controlled by humans. They wait around for humans to invite them to do something. So, these gods were personal, but they weren’t ultimate.
But, with the God of the Bible. The one, true God. He is both ultimate AND personal. There’s no other religion like Christianity. It’s totally unique. And because God is personal, he speaks. God SPEAKS, he speaks TO US! Can you believe that? He speaks words. And because God is ultimate. He speaks with authority.
Let’s talk about authority. Now, those of us who are Christians might think, “Well of course, God’s word, the Bible, is authoritative.” And for hundreds of years, Christians and even much of Western Civilization would say that we SHOULD submit our lives to God’s Word. But then came the Enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries, and people began to think for themselves, apart from God. They thought that with the use of human reason—rationality, along with the help of science and technology that we could outsmart God.
So, professors in universities became critical of the Bible. They began to pick it apart. And they taught their students to be skeptical. And then that same skepticism made its way into our Christian seminaries, and then our theologians began teaching our pastors to be critical of the Bible. And now many of our churches are filled with pastors and church members and attenders who haven’t submitted their lives to the Bible. They don’t recognize its authority. They don’t take the Bible seriously.
And we know this . . . we are aware that not all churches today believe the Bible. And I don’t want to pick on any one denomination, but we probably could name a few. And the history of the church in America is really fascinating, but it was probably in the 1920’s that Christianity in America really kind of split over this issue of biblical authority. That’s when these seminaries began to reject things like the virgin birth, the resurrection, the atonement. They rejected the miracles in the Bible. But there WERE some defenders of the Bible. And I’ll just give you one name: Gresham Machen. He was instrumental in maintaining a foundational belief in the Bible. He started new denominations; he started new seminaries. And he wrote an important book, Christianity and Liberalism. And I’ll commend it to you. Although it’s an old book, written back in 1923, and it’s not an easy read, but it is short. But anyway, he basically says that liberal Christianity is not really Christianity at all. It’s something else. Without an authoritative Bible, then there’s no more Christianity.
So, the Bible is authoritative. And the reason why is because they’re God’s words. And God, as we’ve said, is both ultimate and personal. And so we can also say, then, that God’s personal words ARE God himself. He IS his words. God is a speaking God, and he most often speaks about himself. So, in a real way, we can equate God's words with himself.
Now obviously, we don’t worship the Bible, the words that are printed in a book. But the Bible IS a revelation of God, so we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s in the Bible that we learn about God’s attributes—his power, and how that authority creates demands. We must respond to his words.
So, when God speaks to us, his words have power. God’s words are not just words, they actually make things happen. In Genesis 1, verse 3 says, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” God speaks and things happen. Paul says in Romans 4:17, that God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” God’s words are powerful. David tells us in the Psalms, Psalm 33:6, 9 says that “by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host . . . For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.”
So, God creates with his words, and he also destroys with his words. Jeremiah 23:29 asks, “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” Revelation 19:15 says, “From [Jesus’] mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.” So, God’s words are creative, but they’re also destructive. God’s truth is like a hammer that smashes lies, and it's a sword that slices up God’s enemies. So God’s word is powerful.
God’s words also carry weight. They create obligations in us. Because they are authoritative, we ought to believe and obey. We are obligated to do what they say. For example, Adam and Eve were told what they could or could not do. He spoke to them his Words, and they were obligated to obey it. Genesis 2:15-17 reads, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden . . . And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” So God spoke to them, he gave them authoritative words.
But we know what happened, Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Did you catch that? The serpent questioned God’s words. He asked Eve, “Did God really say that?” “Was that really God’s word, are you really obligated to obey it?”
So, it was a question of authority, whose words are you gonna believe and obey. Satan’s words, or God’s words? Or, actually, what happened is that Eve believed and obeyed her own authority, which is what usually happens.
So God’s word is authoritative. It is powerful and it obligates us to believe and obey it.
Now, God spoke his words directly to Adam and Eve, we talked about that, which would’ve been either awesome or terrifying, by the way, probably both. But Adam and Eve heard God’s voice. Which again, to hear God’s voice audibly and still disobey, man that’s pretty bold. But, a little further into the biblical narrative, God chooses for himself a people, the Israelites, we remember the story, Moses leads them out of Egypt, and he again, early on, he speaks to them directly. The people actually heard his voice. But we gotta remember, it wasn’t God with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Now, God thundered from the mountain, ok, and the Israelites were scared. Exodus 20:18-19 says, “Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”
So, it was too much for them. I didn’t wanna hear directly from God. So, God says “alright, fine, I’ll speak to you through Moses.” Deuteronomy 18:18-19 says, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.”
Notice, how Moses and the prophet speak God’s words, meaning what THEY say is also authoritative. We see it again in Jeremiah 1:9. God says to Jeremiah, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.” So, Moses, the first prophet, and Jeremiah and all the other prophets, they are God’s mouthpiece. They speak his words. And notice that just because they’re human, and they’re using a human voice, that in no way takes away from the divine words. They still have all the power and carry all the same obligations as if they came from God himself.
So that was the Old Testament prophets, but then we see it again in the New Testament, that the apostles are the successors to the prophets. In Matthew 10:19-20, Jesus tells his apostles “When they deliver you over, do not be anxious about how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”
Again, we got God’s words in the mouths of humans. And like with the prophets, the apostles' words were not any less authoritative, just because they’re humans. We just read it. It said, “the Spirit of your Father is speaking through you.” So, these people are speaking God’s words.
So we have these words, God’s words, that get written down as Scripture, the prophets wrote most of the Old Testament, and the apostles wrote most of the New Testament. And it's this book, the Bible, that is the foundation of the church. Ephesians 2:20-21 says that we Christians are “members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” Did you catch that? The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, built on the Bible—God’s words that were put into the mouth of the apostles and prophets. Those words that were written down, the Bible. That’s our foundation. It’s what the church is built upon.
Alright. So the Bible has authority, but it’s also INSPIRED. So, what does that mean? What do we mean by the inspiration of Scripture? Inspiration has to do with that relationship between God and the human writers. We said that God’s words weren’t any less authoritative just because they came out of the mouths of humans, but how can that be? Unless those humans just kinda dictated for God.
So, let’s talk about the word, inspiration. The word is not actually in the Bible, but that didn’t stop some Bible translators from using it. The verse in question is 2 Timothy 3:16. You’ve heard it. Some older translations say, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” But the word is theopneustos [thee-AH-nu-stohs], and it means “breathed out.” So the better translations now say, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
So, I said this in the last lesson. It’s not like the writers of Scripture were inspired in the way that maybe an artist might be inspired by a beautiful meadow, or a bowl of fruit. It’s not that God just gave them some inspiration, and then they came up with something creative to say.
So, how did it work?. Was it that God just kinda downloaded his words into their brains? Was it a mechanical, dictation process?
I like how theologian John Frame puts it. He writes regarding Luke, who was the writer of Luke and Acts. Frame says, quote “It is like dictation, because what Luke writes is exactly what God wants us to hear. It is like mechanical inspiration, because God is in full control of the process. But how unlike mechanical dictation it is! . . . God uses Luke’s gifts as a historian and as a physician, his careful accuracy . . . He uses Luke’s intellect and style to convey that truth with all the nuance that he desires” (end quote. p. 142).
Ok, so it’s like dictation, but it’s also unlike dictation. But, still, how can that be? How can God be in complete control of what’s written down, AND at the same time allow for the writer’s personality to come through? Can we make any sense of that? Well, what that means, and this blows my mind every time I think about it, is that God was preparing those writers of Scripture from birth. He was there in the beginning tweaking their personalities for this one purpose, and as they were growing up, he was again tweaking their personalities, until it all converged perfectly in their writing the Scriptures. God’s words came out of the apostles and prophets mouths, and in their writings, just the way God wanted it to, all the while, at the same time preserving the writer's unique personalities. Amazing.
But isn’t that what we read about them, though? That’s what Jeremiah 1:5 says. God tells Jeremiah that “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” And what about Paul? Galatians 1:15-16 says, “But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles.”
So these writers of Scripture, they were being formed all the way, throughout their lives, for just this purpose, so that when God put his words in their mouths, they came out exactly the way God wanted, and they still retained some of the writer's personalities.
Alright. So the Bible has God’s authority, it’s breathed out by him. Which MEANS . . . that it’s without error, it’s inerrant, AND it’s INCAPABLE of erring. The Bible is both inerrant and infallible. It tells the truth; it doesn’t mislead us. It can’t lie, because God cannot lie. Hebrews 6:18 says it “is impossible for God to lie.”
So, why would we ever allow for error in the Bible, anyway. Well, actually many people do, and some of them are Christians. But I wonder. I want to ask those people. What if you were like Moses who spoke with God face to face. Or like Peter who spoke with Jesus face to face. The words that came out their mouths, would you suspect those words of error. Would you accuse God or Jesus of error, to their faces? It’s all God’s words, no different than if we were getting them face to face. So why do we allow for error in the Bible?
Well, one thing that trips us up is that we confuse ‘truth’ with ‘precision.’ They are similar, but they’re not the same. Now, in science or math, there is a certain amount of precision that’s required. If a student says that 2 plus 2 equals 5, then he has not told the truth. But as soon as you get outside the realm of science or math, the truth is less concerned with that kind of precision. In fact, sometimes precision gets in the way of truth.
Here’s an example: If you ask me my age, you’d expect me to tell you how old I turned on my last birthday. That’s how we usually respond. So, I turned 49 on November 28 of last year. So, I’ve answered your question, BUT the answer was not precise. But you still got the truth. You got the answer you were after.
Now, I could’ve been much more precise. I could have said that I’m 49 years, 8 months, 9 days, 35 weeks, 6,024 hours and 361,440 minutes old. Now THAT’S precise. But, is that really what you were asking? Did you really want to hear all that? No. In fact, I’ve probably annoyed you. I’ve actually frustrated the process of communicating that truth.
So, God’s words are truth. They’re just not always as precise as we’d like. But, really, who are we to make demands on God’s words?
Now, that’s not to say there aren’t legitimate problems that we do run into with the Bible. A lot of times, what we think are errors, are really just difficulties. And I’ll explain what I mean. And by the way these difficulties are new. Critics of Christianity have tried to use these difficulties against us since the very beginning of the church. And most of these problems have actually been resolved long ago. But of course they keep coming back up. And we should know, at the end of the day, that our faith really doesn’t depend on if we can solve all these problems.
Now, some of these difficulties are theological. They have to do with things like how can Jesus be both God and man, or how can we have free will if God’s in control of everything, or the problem of evil. Things like that. Things that are really beyond our ability to understand completely. Now the Bible does speak on those issues, we can have some understanding of them, but that understanding is not exhaustive. We can’t know the deep things of God exhaustively. And we really shouldn’t expect to have an exhaustive understanding of these things, because then we’d be God. Only God can have exhaustive knowledge. So there ARE mysteries in the Bible. I mean, again, we’re talking about God here. I think it would probably be MORE surprising, if there were NO mysteries at all.
Other difficulties are when the Bible appears to get the facts wrong. Like, for example, when Jesus told a parable that said the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. In that parable he said that the mustard seed is the smallest of the seeds. But, Botanists today, scientists who study seeds, have actually found seeds that are smaller than mustard seeds. So, does that mean there’s an error there in the Bible? Well no. It could be that in that part of the world at that time in history, it was the smallest seed. Or, maybe it was that Jesus was not that concerned with precision in the parable.
So, there are difficulties in the Bible. Some are troubling, like the problem of evil, and then there are others, like the size of seeds, that we can just kinda roll our eyes at the critics.
But we can trust the Bible. And we’ll get more into that in Lesson 4.
Alright. So, what we wanted to establish here in this second lesson is that the Bible is God’s Words. It has all the authority as if he were speaking to us face to face—we’re obligated to believe it and obey it. The Bible is also inspired, meaning that God breathed it out. And because it’s God’s authoritative, inspired words, it’s also inerrant. It contains no errors. And even more than that it’s infallible, meaning it couldn’t err if it wanted to. God cannot lie.
Now, we’re getting close to time, so I’ll end with this. Hopefully you’ve felt some of the weight of all this. If this Bible is God’s words, if it’s authoritative, if it creates obligations in us. Then how should we respond to that? I’d encourage you to really wrestle with it. How do you receive God’s Word? Do you submit to it? Or do you fight against it? Go ahead and reflect on that this week.
Ok. Thanks for listening to this lesson. Hope you’ll continue on to the next one, as we continue to learn ABOUT God AND how to live for him.
SOURCES:
Frame, John. The Doctrine of the Word of God. P&R, 2010.
MacArthur, John. How to Study the Bible. Moody, 2009.