The Wondrous Inspiration of Scripture

Psalm 119 and verse number 18. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. And then one additional verse for the time being.

Turn, if you will, to verse number 129. Psalm 119, verse number 129. Thy testimonies are wonderful, therefore doth my soul keep them.

Now we've been looking this week, as you well know, most of you at least know, at things that are spoken of in the word of God as God's wonderful works. At times the word is translated marvelous, other times wondrous, other times wonderful. All the very same word.

From Psalm 136 we considered something of the wondrous work of God in creation. And then we considered on Tuesday evening, from Psalm 139, God's wondrous work in formation, in the formation of the human being, in the formation of our bodies and personalities. Last evening we considered from Psalm number 40, the wondrous work of God in incarnation, and all of the fruits that has come because of the incarnation, the enfleshing of the Lord Jesus Christ as a genuine, true man.

Tonight, in the will of God and with God's help, consider something of the wondrous work of inspiration. The inspiration of the word of God. And then tomorrow evening, as God helps, we'll look at what the psalmist refers to in Psalm 72, Psalm 118 as well.

The stone the builders rejected become the head of the corner. This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous, wondrous in our eyes. The wondrous work of exaltation.

But tonight it is the teaching relative to the inspiration of the word of God. And I guess I have to almost ask the indulgence and patience of those who are older and tell you it's going to be a little bit technical perhaps. And maybe things that you wonder, do we really need to go there with this information? But primarily for the benefit and sake of younger believers.

And when you get my age, almost everyone is a younger believer than you are. So we're taking the majority of you here nevertheless. But it will be a bit technical at times.

And just bear with me if that is the case and you find it a little rough going. I ask you to turn to three places in the New Testament that will deal with the issue of the inspiration of the word of God. First of all, 1 Corinthians 2. 1 Corinthians 2 and we will break in at verse number 9. But as it is written, 1 Corinthians 2 and 9, I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of men, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

But God has revealed them unto us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.

So there we have the necessity for inspiration. If we are ever going to know God, it is only God who can reveal to us his mind. And as we read further here in this section, we would find we have the mind of Christ.

2 Timothy 3, these are all very familiar portions. 2 Timothy 3 and verse number 15. 2 Timothy 3.15. And that from a child thou hast known the holy or sacred or temple scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

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 perfect or complete, truly furnished unto all good works. The scope of inspiration.

And finally 2 Peter 1.19. 2 Peter 1.19. We have also a more sure word of prophecy. 2 Peter 1.19. The nature then, if you will, of inspiration. We trust God will add his blessing to the public reading of his word.

You're a long way from New York City right here tonight. And I'm sure most of you are saying, I'm very thankful that's the case. But in New York City, there's a man by the name of Dale Henderson, who lugs his cello down the steps of the metro subway stations.

And there in the concourse underground, as subways come and go, he gives free cello concerts. Specializes in many of Bach's cello concertos. And he does it because he cannot imagine a world without classical music.

And so he goes to all that trouble to keep classical music alive. Because to him, the thought of a world without classical music is something he cannot bear. Think for a moment of what a world would be like without the Bible.

What kind of world would it be without the word of God? Not only would we not have light as to the way to heaven, but think of what your life and mine would have been like without this book. I shudder to think how I would have lived. What I would have done, how I would have self-destructed without this book to guide us.

A world without the Bible. Unthinkable to us, to whom the word of God is so precious and so valuable. The inspiration of scripture, one of God's wondrous works.

The wonderful things of the word of God. First of all, I guess it's necessary for us just to be clear what we mean by inspiration. Unfortunately, we think when we think of something inspired, we think of breathing in.

And in actual reality, it's the exact opposite. When we're speaking about the inspiration of scripture, and we turn to 2 Timothy 3, all scripture is God-breathed, God-breathed out. And as a result, we have the word of God.

It is interesting that if you go back to Genesis 2, God breathed out, didn't he? He breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul. God breathed into a creature and set him apart from every other creature he had made. The distinctiveness, the uniqueness of mankind, humanity.

Man-made relational, man-made rational, man-made reflective, man-made in a relationship. God set man apart by breathing into him and giving him the breath of life. God breathed out again, and in doing so, he set this book apart from every other book in the world.

Now, there are good books. There are books that can give us insight and intelligence and help in different areas of life. But when God breathed out his word, he set this book apart from every other book in our world.

So, inspiration, then, is God breathing out his truth. Now, we need to maybe separate a couple of things. Impartation is God giving a man knowledge.

Inspiration is God causing him to write it exactly as he wanted it written. Illumination is when you and I read it and understand it. So, there's the imparting, the inspiring, and the illumination.

And we're looking today at the fact of God controlling what a man put upon pen and paper as he recorded the word of God for generations to come. Now, I just want, in the brief time we have, to answer four questions relative to this book. Number one, is it reliable? Can I come to this book and know that it's truth? Is it reliable? Number two, is it a revelation? I mean, there are books you can read that are reliable.

If you're a mechanic, you buy a book that helps you know how to handle different cars, or you buy a computer program. There are books that are reliable, but they're not revelations. They're not truth from God, so is it reliable, number one? Number two, is it a revelation? Number three, there are lots of books out there in the world, and they contain a lot of truth, but they have nothing to do with me.

I would never spend money buying them. I would never spend time reading them. They're not very relevant to my life.

But the third question is, is this book relevant? Does it really have relevancy for your life and mine? And lastly, does this book supply the resources that you and I need for every aspect of life? I am hopefully going to be able to show you that this book contains the answers to everything you will ever face in life. You may say, that's a big statement. You'll understand I'm saying there are principles here, and there is truth here, that were we able to grasp it? The problem is not the book.

The problem is the brother. The problem I have when I cannot come to the word of God and find the answer to a difficulty or the answer to a problem or direction in a decision-making time, the problem is not with the book. It's all here.

The problem is with me and my inability to know it and grasp it as I ought to. So is the book, number one, reliable? Number two, is it a revelation? Number three, is it relevant to my life? And number four, are its resources adequate for every aspect of my life as a believer? Now, that's a tall order in about 40 minutes, and we'll seek God's help to do so. Let me talk to you for a moment, and here's where we get a bit technical, about what we call manuscripts.

Now, you may never have been faced with this, but many of our young people in university and in witnessing to neighbors and in trying to spread the gospel are frequently confronted with the fact, they'll tell you that, friends will tell you, what you have in your hand is not the original, is it? And it's not. In fact, the best we can do is to go back about 200 years after the time of Christ and begin to have some manuscripts that are available to us to examine. But don't write that off too quickly.

You'll find that's a very, very, very strong argument for its authenticity. Just bear with me. We have 5,488 manuscripts of the Word of God.

Now, some of them are complete, some of them are partial, and some of them go back to as far back as 300 A.D. But let me tell you something else that's even more significant. If you ever have trouble sleeping and suffer from insomnia, I suggest you buy, I think it's, I forget how many volumes, we're in at 20-some volumes, the writings of the church fathers. And they're guaranteed to put you to sleep in very short order.

But what is significant, it's letters that men wrote back and forth to each other in which they discussed different issues. And if you take all of those volumes and other writings that we have from the 3rd, 4th, 5th century together, and you were to extract from all of those books, all of those letters, all of that correspondence, scriptures they quoted to each other, and passages of scripture they cited, from those writings that go back now almost 1,800 years, you could reconstruct the Bible minus about 11 verses. To me, that's incredible.

5,488 manuscripts, and along with that, the letters that we have that men wrote to each other, all giving us the word of God minus just 11 verses. So we have an abundance of manuscript evidence. And along with that, along with the abundance, the age of those manuscripts.

Now, those of you who have had to sit through college courses know the name Homer and the Iliad and the Odyssey, and his writings. Do you know there are only 643 copies of Homer's writings, and the closest they can get to Homer, when he lived and when he wrote, is about 500 years. So we have nothing from the time Homer lived until he died, for 500 more years, copies of things that he had written.

Yet, no one ever challenges the fact that he wrote it. And we could say that we could go into the same about Plato, and Aristotle, and Pliny, and others. We have over 24,000, 24,000, not manuscripts now, but what you would call copies or portions of scripture.

And if you ever travel, the British Museum in Dublin, and the university there, portions of the word of God that go back actually to the first century itself. Small snippets, I know, but nevertheless, we have far more abundant evidence for the authenticity of the scriptures you hold in your hand than all the classic scholars that go back to Homer, Plato, Pliny, the historian, all of those. This book stands on far greater authority, and far greater reliability than all of that.

But not only that, I don't want to again bore you, but we often hear in terms of apologetics, defending the word of God, the evidence from archaeology. Now we have to remember, archaeology does not prove the inspiration of scripture. It only proves the reliability of the record, that what it has recounted as history is absolutely accurate and true.

It's interesting that today, March 23rd, 1899, so you do the math very quickly, that's 118 years ago. As of today, there was a man by the name of Caldaway, a German I believe, and today was the day he started digging and unearthed tremendous relics of Babylon. The walls of Babylon, inscriptions of the Hanging Garden, some of the writings of Babylon, some of the things that substantiate what the word of God says so clearly.

Today is the 118th anniversary of that, when he began his digging there in that land, and he uncovered the walls of Babylon and all that came with it, and electrified the world of archaeology with what he had found, substantiating everything that the word of God said about Babylon. Even records of some of Babylon's battles and so on, and even attesting to the fact that the king lifted up the head of Jehoiakim at the end of his reign, and gave him food and so on. All of that was confirmed.

119 years ago, 118 years ago rather, by the spade. The word of God being confirmed by the spade. Let me just mention a few things.

For example, the walls of Jericho. Now, if an earthquake had affected the walls of Jericho, the city would have imploded on itself. When Jericho was excavated in 1930, they found the city wasn't plundered, but rather the walls fell out.

They found it was at harvest time. They actually found remnants of harvest that were being kept in bottles there in the city. And it confirmed the fact that it was a unique destruction of the walls.

Instead of falling in and crumbling it, it fell out and became really the wall that kept them out, now became a staircase to let them in. It was all confirmed about 100 years ago, when Jericho was excavated. The name of Sargon, mentioned once in your Bible, in the book of Isaiah.

Sargon was only mentioned once. And for many, many years, men could not find his name in antiquity, in the historic records. And of course, immediately, what occurs is men begin to deny the word of God as a result.

And it was in 1843, a French archaeologist found fragments of a steel, they call them, and on it was the name of Sargon, and substantiated it. What about Daniel and Belshazzar? Again, Daniel and the Lion's Den, Sir Robert Anderson, you can read it. The claims of men that Daniel was totally inaccurate, because there was never a ruler by the name of Belshazzar, over the land of Babylon.

Now, of course, they're partially right. His father, who was the ruler, had gone off to battle, had left his son, Belshazzar, a second in command of the city. Now you see, doesn't that make sense, when Belshazzar says to Daniel, I will make you third ruler in the kingdom.

And eventually, archaeology confirmed that there was a man named Belshazzar, who was second ruler in the kingdom, in the absence of his father. The polytarchs of Acts 17, that Luke refers to, again, people said there never were such rulers over the city, in Thessalonica. But again, the spade confirmed that there were such rulers as polytarchs, over the city.

But we can go into many, many other, many, many other examples of how archaeology has confirmed the truth of the word of God. But I don't want to bore you too much. If you've never been assaulted with this by the skeptics, you don't have to listen.

But you'll be told, do you know that there are 200,000 mistakes in the Bible? Well, that sounds pretty impressive. 200,000 mistakes in the Bible, really? Well, of course, what they're saying is that if you look at a particular manuscript, it will have one word, and if you look at the King James Version or Authorized Version, it might have a different word. And of course, when you analyze all that, it's like the word upon versus on, or a versus the, or but versus yet.

And all of those 200,000, quote, mistakes have no bearing on any truth in the word of God. Now, if you have a Newbery Bible, you'll notice that Mr. Newbery gives you variant manuscript readings at the bottom of each page, at least in your New Testament. He very helpfully informs us about what other manuscripts might say and whether it has any bearing on how you would understand a particular verse.

But all of the mistakes, allegedly, are simply differences, minor differences between manuscripts. Now, you've got to remember. Again, it's another whole subject that the Bible originally, this was before the day, I know young people can hardly conceive, but before the day of word processing and computers, people actually did things by hand.

And the scribes who were the copyists of the day, they would copy out the Old Testament by hand. They would know exactly how many letters on every page. They would count at the end.

And if one letter were missing, the page was destroyed and they started over again. They could tell you the middle verse of the Pentateuch. They could tell you the middle word of the Pentateuch.

They could tell you the middle letter of the Pentateuch. Everything was absolutely calibrated and counted. And they meticulously copied out the word of God.

But, of course, in those, if you know anything about Hebrew words, just little minor variations sometimes can change the significance of a word in some measure. And so there were differences that did arise. But now you have to understand how they count those 200,000 differences.

If your authorized version says, but, and 10 other manuscripts say, yet, then that's 10 mistakes. You may say, well, there's only one. No, 10 manuscripts are different.

So, and again, all of those alleged mistakes have no bearing upon the truth of the word of God and its doctrine. So just to clarify that for us. But how do we go about gaining confidence in the word of God? What is there that we can look to that gives us confidence this is the word of God? Now, it's important to stress we are not looking at scientific evidence.

Scientific evidence, all of you that have been, any high school science class knows the essence of science is reproducibility. You have an experiment, you get a result and you're able to reproduce it and prove it again and again and again. So the essence of scientific proof is reproducibility.

Well, God's not going to reproduce his word for us again. He's done it once. How do you judge something that's historic? How do you judge something at a court of law? You don't reproduce something at a court of law.

You bring in expert testimony. You bring in witnesses. You bring in the proof and it's then judged on its own merits.

So, let me just mention a few things. First of all, there is the testimony of the Savior himself. Now, you may say, well, that's kind of circular reasoning.

I mean, you're saying the Lord Jesus said it is the word of God and yet it's the word of God that tells us the Lord Jesus said it. But in a court of law, a man is allowed to testify on his own behalf. And the character of the man will give value or detract from his testimony.

Now, I think it was C.S. Lewis was the first person who postulated what I'm about to say. You will find people who say Jesus Christ was a good man. Jesus Christ was a great teacher.

But Jesus Christ is not. He can't be God and he can't be telling us the Bible is the word of God. Well, you see, that's absolute madness to say that.

How can you say a man is a good man if he claimed to be God and wasn't? How can you say a man was a great teacher if he taught that he was the Son of God and that he was the only way to heaven and he really isn't? So, I mean, it was C.S. Lewis. And again, this is said with reverence. He said Christ is either a lunatic, a liar, or he is Lord of all.

Either he didn't know what he was saying and was out of his mind, or he intentionally lied, or he is who he said he is. He's Lord of all. You can't waffle on it and somehow pigeonhole him and get away with saying, well, I really think what he was, he was a wonderful man, and I don't want to offend you, so he was really a great teacher, but to claim he's the only way to heaven.

But that's what he taught. That's what he taught, that he is the only way to heaven. So the testimony of the Savior was that this book is the inspired, God-breathed Word of God that will judge every man.

You only have to go back and look at the various... He alluded to the flood. He spoke of the flood. He alluded to various events in the Old Testament, to creation.

In the beginning, that he made them male and female, and so on. He goes back to creation. He goes back to the flood.

He goes back to Jacob. He goes back to Abraham. He goes back to the book of Genesis.

He goes back to the book of Exodus. He goes back to the book of Leviticus. He substantiates it all.

And so he is either madman or Messiah. No middle ground for us to waffle in. And the testimony of the Savior.

We mentioned already the testimony of the spade of archaeology, so we'll just leave that for a moment. Could I mention to you as well the testimony of sinners who've been saved by grace. I had a professor in university when I was there ages ago.

I know this works. There it is. And she was an English professor.

And she was an authority on a particular author. And she was mentioning a book that this author had written. And in her desire to praise the author and to praise the book, she said she actually met a person who said that reading that book changed his life.

One person. How many people have had their lives changed by this book? This book. You could fill, well, I was going to say you could fill stadiums.

Better still, you'll fill heaven. It's going to fill heaven with the people whose lives have been changed by this book. We've got our brother Duncan with us tonight, so he would know the name of Robert Moffat, one of Scotland's great heroes.

Robert Moffat was a missionary to Africa and labored long and hard before he saw a soul saved. But nevertheless, on one occasion, on one occasion as he was sitting in his hut, whatever it was, one of the chiefs, one of the African chiefs came to him, absolutely irate. And the chief was irate because he said, my dog will never hunt for me again.

And Moffat, you know, what's that have to do with me that your dog will never hunt again? What had happened was that the chief's dog had gotten into Robert Moffat's, one of Robert Moffat's Bibles and had eaten away at some of the pages. And the chief said, my dog will never hunt for me again because everyone who takes in that book, it changes their life. Humorous, but yet how true.

Everyone who takes in that book changes their life. My dog will never hunt for me again. That book has changed our lives, hasn't it? Changed our lives now.

And it changed our lives for all eternity. God's wonderful work in inspiration. The testimony of the Savior, the testimony of the spade, the testimony of sinners who have been saved by grace.

I think the ultimate proof of the inspiration of this book is the testimony of the stone and the sepulcher. The resurrection of Christ. Ultimately, if Christ be not raised, our faith is in vain.

The Lord Jesus Christ himself said, destroy this body and in three days I will raise it again. We're reminded in 1 Corinthians 15, not only that he died according to the scriptures, but that he was burned and he raised according to the scriptures. His resurrection verifies the truth of the word of God.

Everything really rests. I mean, we speak of the cross as the basis of all, and I'm not taking from that. But really, everything rests on a resurrected Christ.

If Christ be not raised, if there was no resurrection, if we are just living in a fantasy world, and somehow we are tragically, tragically deceived. But the proof of resurrection is beyond doubt. All those who have ever tried to approach it in a legal, historical manner have had to own.

The proof is overwhelming for resurrection, for the reality of a resurrected, living Christ. And so, his very resurrection is what substantiates the truth of the word of God. It vindicates Christ and it vindicates all that Christ taught.

There is as well the proof of the seers, the proof of the prophets themselves. Now, we all delight, don't we, to look at Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Psalm 16, Psalm 40. We love to go through those scriptures and look at Christ and all the scriptures and think of how all that was said of him was so faithfully fulfilled in his life and in his death.

Some have claimed that he self-fulfilled prophecy. For example, we all know the very, very careful calculations of Sir Robert Anderson and the Lord Jesus Christ presenting himself to the nation in his entry into Jerusalem. But some say, well, he knew that and so because he knew it was going to happen, he did it.

He self-fulfilled the prophecy. Well, they're right. He did know it and he did self-fulfill it.

But let's just take prophecies that he had no way of fulfilling himself. For example, the time of his birth, the place of his birth, the manner of his birth. Those are just three.

Think of his betrayal by Judas. Think of the manner of his death. Think of the treatment he received at the hands of men, the spitting, the shame, the scourging, the bruising.

Think of all of that. Think of the piercing of his hands, feet and his side. Think of his burial by a rich man.

He could control none of those things. They were all things that were done to him or done outside of his human control, if we can call it that. So there's just eight prophecies.

Now you ask someone who's had mathematical probability and statistics to determine what is the likelihood of eight independent events occurring in the life of one person 500 years after they were written, a minimum, 700 years after they were written. What's the probability of all that occurring in one person's life? And they will tell you it's equivalent to covering the state of Wisconsin with white golf balls and putting one black golf ball somewhere amidst that crowd, blindfolding me and telling me to find the black golf ball. That's the likelihood of one person in his life fulfilling just eight of these prophecies.

And actually, if you were to take time and look at it, the prophecies are far more than simply eight. So the testimony then of the Sears, the testimony of its survival, of this book's survival. This book has survived the passage of time.

It survived the prophecies of its enemies. It survived the persecution from its foes. The passage of time.

We live in a very, very rapid-paced society. Today's bestseller that everyone is reading and you must read and you must get it and you must devour it is usually forgotten in less than a year. A good book, a classic, a Charles Dickens, a Bronte, they survive a couple of hundred years.

The truly great masters, the Shakespeare's and the Dante's, they may go 500, 600 years. This book, what's it working on now? When Malachi laid down his pen, it was A.D. 400, so it's 2400 years. And when Moses took up his pen, it was 1500 year B.C., so we're looking at 3500 years to 2400 years period that this book has survived.

Not just survived, but flourished. This book has survived the passage of time. This book has survived not just the passing of time, but the prophecies of its foes.

And it has had many, from the German critics to Voltaire to others, all prophesying this book would soon be forgotten. Was it one of the Beatles who said that he would be more famous than Jesus Christ? Men will forget Christ and think of him. You know who's forgotten? You know whose name will live on forever? This book has survived the prophecies of all of its foes.

This book has survived the persecution of its enemies. Whether you go back to Diocletian and the persecution against the Christians and the attempts to eradicate the Word of God, Antiochus Epiphanes, requiring all Bibles to be burned, all Scripture to be burned. Whether you're looking at what occurred in the time of men like Gutenberg and others, Miles Coverdale, Tyndale, men who were burned at the stake for the Word of God and every attempt being made by its foes to destroy the Word of God.

I think there are... I should have checked this before coming. Maybe someone can correct me. I think there's about a dozen copies of what is known as the Bloody Bible.

It was when Mary, Queen of Scots, was on her bloody rampage against Protestantism. The soldiers would come into a home and would slay, kill those who were professing believers and take their Bibles and dip it in their blood. And the Bibles became known as Bloody Bibles.

It's a testimony. And I think there's about 11 or so of them still in existence in the world today. Attempts to eradicate it have all failed.

This Bible continues to live on. The testimony of its survival. But I have to hurry.

I want to speak not just of its reliability but of its revelation. We read together, 1 Corinthians 2, that no man knows the spirit of a man except that man. Now what that simply means in everyday language is and it's very fortunate, I don't know what you're thinking.

And I'm glad I don't. The only one who knows what you're thinking is you. No man knows the spirit of a man but that man.

We can't read each other's thoughts. Now if I cannot read the thoughts of another human being, how could I ever discover God's thoughts? And so he says, No man knows the spirit of a man but that man. Neither knoweth any man the mind of God but the spirit of God.

So if we are going to know God, it must be through revelation. He must communicate to us something of what is in His mind and something of what He would like us to know. So we're reminded.

Now that's just a necessity for it. If we are going to know God, it must be through revelation. We cannot by searching ourselves find out God.

Not a matter of our intellect somehow rising to the occasion. Not a matter of the accumulated knowledge of men somehow being able to discover what God is like. Not a matter of philosophic speculation.

If we are going to know God, He must reveal Himself to us. And so we are told that no prophecy ever came from that prophet himself but rather holy men of God were born along. Holy men of God were born along by the spirit of God.

And they wrote. Now, when a man was... Now we don't... I should... Hopefully this isn't necessary, but let me just clarify it. We're not speaking of inspiration like you speak about a poet being inspired or a songwriter being inspired by different things just to write something.

What we're speaking about is God controlling. God controlling what a man wrote. So that when that man put his pen down, put his period at the end of what he was writing, what he wrote was word for word what God intended him to write.

Now God did not violate personality. He didn't violate intellect. But He controlled what those men put to paper.

And so God has revealed Himself. The Word of God attests that holy men of God speak as they were born along by the spirit of God. The wording there in 2 Peter 1. We didn't read the whole context.

He speaks of being on the holy mount and being with the Lord Jesus Christ when He received from God the Father honor and glory for there was born along to Him a voice. Now He uses the same word. That holy men of God were born along just like the voice that came from heaven to earth communicating God's message.

Holy men of God were born along as well as they communicated God's message to men. And as they wrote it, it was word for word the mind of God to us. So we are incredibly blessed and privileged to hold in our hands the inspired record of God.

God breathed out His Word. Accurate, inspired. It wasn't really the... Again, a technical difference.

It wasn't the men so much who were inspired. But it was the message. It was the message.

It's not like a motivational talk and you get all inspired and then you go out and do something wonderful. God didn't inspire the men to write. The inspiration was what they wrote.

The message, the communication from God to us. And now we have the Spirit of God to illuminate us and to give us the help we need. Let me rush here.

It is reliable. It is a revelation. Thirdly, is it relevant? Is this book really relevant? Here we are in 21st century America living in the western world with all of our technology, with all of our blessings materially and physically, with all the insurance we need to keep us secure and with all the information available to us on the internet to make decisions and everything else.

Is this book really still relevant? Let me ask you something. Let me just give you an example. My wife called me and said, don't text me.

I'm having trouble with my iPhone. I don't know what I did. I hit something and I can't get it.

Well, you know what she did? She went back to the Apple store, back to the manufacturer because the manufacturer knows how things work. The manufacturer gave us this book to tell us how to work, how to get things right. The manufacturer has given us the factory manual, if you understand what I'm saying.

We've got the factory manual in our hands. So this book is the manual from the manufacturer of life and we can get no better authority. Number two, this book addresses the meaning of life.

You ever read Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning? He was a Jewish doctor who was imprisoned during World War II in a Nazi concentration camp, a Jewish doctor. Lost his wife, lost his children, saw people all around him dying day after day, yet he came through it and he wrote his book, Man's Search for Meaning. Tremendous book with some tremendous insights.

But this book gives us the meaning of life, what life is all about, what we're here for, why God made us. This book addresses the message of life. This book will give us the message that brings life to us.

This book as well tells us the measure of a man's life and this book as well helps us to maneuver our way through life. Relevant? I mean, you could find nothing more relevant, could you? Tells us from the manufacturer. Tells us what life's meaning is.

Tells us a message about life. Tells us the measure of a life. Tells us how to maneuver our way through life.

This book gives us all of that and much, much more. Is this book relevant? Is there any area of life that this book does not address? Business life? Family life? Married life? Personal life? Investment life? I mean, you can hardly think. In fact, I can't.

Think of an area of life that this book does not address. But not only every area of life but every appetite. Do you ever think of all that's in your Bible? There's poetry.

There's music. There's biography. There's history.

There's philosophy. I mean, it's all here. It's a full library in 66 individual books.

A full library that would appeal to all the appetites that any of us could have as far as reading and as far as that which we would enjoy. Here is a book then that addresses everything. And of course, we're told.

We read together in 2 Timothy 3 that the man of God may be truly furnished unto every good work. That means there is nothing you'll be called upon by God to do. That this book will not give you instruction and guidance.

That the man of God may be truly furnished. That means complete. For every good work.

Nothing that you'll be called upon to do. That this book will not guide you and instruct you and enable you for. This book is relevant for us here in 21st century North America.

Is this book adequate? We read together in 2 Timothy 3 again, verse 16. It is profitable for correction, for instruction. Let me read it exactly again.

Speaks there about for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness. This book is absolutely adequate. First of all, as doctrine, it tells me what is right.

What is right. As doctrine. For reproof, it tells me where I've gone wrong.

For correction, it tells me how to get right. And for instruction and righteousness, it tells me how to stay right. Tells me what's right.

When I'm wrong, how to get rights and how to stay right. So all of that. Here is a book that is my resource book for spiritual life and for life in general.

It is relevant. It is realistic. It is resourceful.

It is all that we need as the people of God for our lives. This book will deal with everything. I think probably most of you here are familiar with Handel's Messiah.

Maybe some of you don't know that Handel was deeply depressed. May have been because of being in debt or may have been because of lack of success of some of his writings. He was very, very depressed.

Charles Jennings came to him with a manuscript. What we now call the Messiah. And he asked Handel to please write the musical score for it.

In almost a frenzy, if you can call it that. In almost a month, that man who was deeply depressed and despondent, as he went over the words of that tremendous score of Handel's Messiah, which is primarily Scripture set to music, totally transformed him. Totally transformed him.

Lifted him from the doldrums of his depression. As he became immersed in the Word of God. Became immersed in the prophecies concerning Christ.

And it totally changed him from that moment on. The Word of God and its tremendous healing effects. The Word of God and not just its healing effects, but its tremendous guidance that it offers us in life.

And the tremendous hope that it leaves before humanity. What a wonder that we have in our hands this tremendous book. I know I've hurried through things and probably made a lot of shortcuts and could have said more, but let me just mention one other thing in closing.

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem. Very, very brief, so you'll just bear with me. He said, We search the earth for truth.

We call the good, the pure, the beautiful. From graven stone and written scroll, from the flower fields of the soul and weary seekers for the best, we come back laden from our quest to find that all the sages said is in the book our mothers read. The book our mothers read.

The Word of God. Men search for wisdom and it's all here. Men search for peace and it's all here.

Men search in a very, very insecure world for security. In fact, when young people come to me and say what field should they go into, I suggest security is it in one form or another. Whether it's IT or whether it's in other forms of security, that's where the money is in the future.

We live in a very insecure world and men crave and covet and work for security. This book is our security. This book is everything you need.

Whether you're thinking of raising your family, whether you're thinking of starting a business, whether you're thinking of how to spend your retirement, this book will guide. The book our mothers read. The book that has been handed to us from generations past.

The book that we can securely build our lives upon as well as our eternity. Now, we'll speak to God in prayer. Our Father, in the name of Thy Son, we bow before Thee and we are thankful again for the inspired Word of God.

We have said and we do echo it again, where would we be without the Word of God? If the world had never known a Bible, if there had never been light from heaven to shine upon our pathway, what a tragic life it would be and what an even more tragic eternity. And so we pause again. We are not worshippers of the Bible, but we are worshippers of the God who gave us the Bible.

And so we bow to thank Thee again for Thy goodness in giving us Thy Word and giving us light for our pathway. Do we pray, encourage Thy people, grant increased confidence in the Word of God and a desire to know it better that it might guide us in every step of our lives. We commit our ways, ourselves to Thee now, in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.