The History and Authority of the Bible

Let's pray. Dear God, we come to you in the name of Jesus and Lord, we live, we're now in this time of Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving is appropriate, Lord, because you have given us so much in spite of the truth that we live in a world under the sway of the evil one and this whole world lies in wickedness and there's so much evil and deception and addiction and suicide and pain and Lord, these things grieve us and they grieve your heart and yet your word tells us to not be anxious, not worry, but pray and pray with Thanksgiving. So Lord, we're praying for you to do a mighty miracle in the life of this Stephanie, Lord, that you would just touch her in a powerful way, that you do a mighty miracle in my daughter's life right now, Corrie, just touch her and save her, that you would touch Betsy where she's at as well and Lord, as we ask for these things, we also give you thanks for what you will do.

We give you thanks for what you've already done. We just ask you, God, to come and pour out your spirit upon us now as we listen and Lord, pour out your spirit on my brother Jeremy as he shares. I pray God that we would go away changed.

We would be different. This is a week, once again, of Thanksgiving. No matter how bad things get, you are good.

You are God in heaven and Lord, I pray for Jeremy's tongue that it would just share what we need and for our ears that we would hear what we need. Thank you, God, for being with us. We just ask you to guide and direct us now in Jesus' name.

Amen. God bless you, brother. You can be seated.

Good morning. I'd like to share some things this morning about the book that you carried most likely in, the Bible. I want to talk about the scriptures today.

A couple weeks back, or maybe it was a month ago, we played a sermon here about the head covering and we went through one of the chapters in the Bible in 1st Corinthians about the head covering. Why we obey that, why we look to that, and why we take that seriously. I'd say that's one of our distinctives here.

We go around Christianity today and we can see clearly that not everybody is taking that seriously. Another distinctive, I believe, that we have here is that we hold reverence to this. We look at this, as it says on the front of my Bible, here's this Holy Bible.

We look at it as something that's holy and we look at it as something to be obeyed. We look at it as something that we need to take seriously. Now, we may take that for granted because I've been in a Baptist church for years, which took the Bible seriously, but there are other denominations out there that would put other things at the level of Scripture.

For example, the Catholics and the Orthodox would put their traditions at the same level as the Scripture. The Mormons would actually have a whole other book, the Book of Mormon, that they would hold and put at the same level. But we are putting the Bible as its own entity, the one book that we've looked to as an authority.

So I want to look at that this morning. In many ways the Bible is kind of like something that we would set up as a rule, something that we would measure by. If you could imagine, what would you think if a construction worker, you hired a construction team to come build a house and they showed up and they had no tape measures? What would your house look like by the time it was done? What would you want to get on that plane that Boeing just got built by a bunch of machinists who never used any calipers or micrometers? They just eyed it, you know.

It looks good. You think that you'd be comfortable getting in that engine as it turns on? What about that police officer that pulls you over and he has no law to back him up? He just does whatever comes to his thought. As the Bible says about Israel, it says, in those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

And I'm afraid too much of our society today is doing that, what is right in their own eyes. I remember several years ago sitting with my brother, Raji, I think some of you met him, and I remember he started toying with the idea that maybe the Bible wasn't authoritative, maybe it wasn't authentic. He started toying with the idea that maybe it wasn't a rule, you know, maybe it wasn't something, it was just writings from man.

And now today where he stands three, four years later as he has decided that God, in his own words, is just like a big blob in the sky. He doesn't know how to have a relationship with him. And that will be what you will get if you decide in your heart that this does not have an authority, this is not from God.

Hopefully this morning, I hope by the time we are done, that you will have a respect and a desire to study the Bible and to take it seriously and obey it. I know many of us here believe this, but it's more of a reminder. Just like we believe in the head covering, it's more of a reminder.

Why do we believe in the head covering? Why do we take this so seriously? Now this has been attacked since the beginning of time. We can read right in the beginning of Genesis when God gave a command out of his own mouth. He breathed the command out and said to Eve, do not touch the tree.

What did the devil do? He came right away and said, yea hath God said. Did God really say that? Did he really mean that? And we can see from the beginning of time that the devil's plan is to come in and put these thoughts in your mind. Did God really say that? I was reading to my children this last week about Balaam and how Balak the king called him and said, curse these Israelites.

And he got up there and he couldn't curse them. He could only bless them because he could only do what God wanted him to do. And so then he tried again.

Cursed a different time. Tried to curse these Israelites. He couldn't do it.

He only blessed them. Third time, curse these Israelites. Couldn't do it.

He could only bless them. Finally they came up with a scheme, a plan. Since he couldn't curse the Israelites, what he could do is deceive them into bringing in wives from other countries.

I think it was Midian. And they would marry these Israelite men and they would bring their gods in. And through that deception, they curse themselves.

And in the same way, if the devil can get you to question his word, if he could get you to question the scriptures and say, if God said, is this really from God? We'll be in the same boat. And so this morning, first, what I want to do is start off with a history of the Bible. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but just in case for those here that don't, I want to go through it and take the time.

First of all, this is the best-selling book of all time. The third best-selling book, many of you have heard, the Lord of the Rings. It sold 150 million copies.

The second best-selling book was A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickinson. It sold 200 million copies. And the Bible, so the Lord of the Rings was 150, Charles Dickinson was 200, the Bible has sold 5 billion compared to 200 million copies and translated in over 2,000 languages.

It started off back with the children of Israel, where the scribes and the priests and the prophets and the poets of the Hebrew people kept a record of their history with God. These writings were copied many times. As time went on, these writings were gathered into three collections, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.

Eventually, these three collections became to be considered the canon or the official list, that's what canon means, or it means a measuring rod, of the Hebrew Bible. So it started off with a collection of all these writings, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Pretty soon these collections became put together and it was considered the canon.

When Alexander the Great, which came before Jesus' time, and his successors conquered the ancient world, Greek became the common language of the people. So we know our Old Testament was written in Hebrew for the most part. But before Jesus' time, Alexander the Great, I think he was around 400 years before Christ or so, he conquered the ancient world and now Greek became the common language.

In the third century, or around 250 years before Christ, the Hebrew scriptures, which were this thing we talked about, these collections, were then translated into Greek. It was known as the Septuagint. It was done so those living outside of Palestine, Greek people who spoke Greek, could read in their own common tongue of this God who worked with the Hebrew people.

It was known as the Septuagint and it contained all the books of the Hebrew, the ones you have in your Bible, plus it had seven extra books which were not in the original Hebrew collection and it is known today as the Apocrypha. It is believed that Jesus and his apostles used this Bible when they came on to several hundred years later, when Jesus came on the scene. It is believed when he quoted and the apostles quoted, they were using this Greek Septuagint Bible.

It would have been the Old Testament in Greek though. Greek remained the common language of the people for several hundreds of years. When the early Christians recorded the life of Jesus and the teachings of the Christian faith, they wrote it in Greek.

When Paul wrote his letters and when other apostles wrote their books, they were written in Greek because that was the ancient world's common tongue at the time. The earliest writings of the New Testament were from the Apostle Paul. I didn't know that until I was studying this out.

So the earliest writings we have of the New Testament were from Apostle Paul and the Gospels soon followed. The letters and books began to circulate and eventually, guided by the Spirit of God, the church put together a collection. That most accurately testified to Jesus Christ.

In the fourth century, so between the years 300 and 400, church counseled reached a consensus that the canon of the New Testament was officially recognized. The canon, meaning the books you are used to when you look through your New Testament, was officially recognized. Now that doesn't mean they weren't being used up to this point, but the church was, you know, different people were accepting different things and finally the decision came, these are the ones we will officially recognize.

The canon of the New Testament was officially recognized. Also in the fourth century, about that time, the Emperor Constantine authorized the creation of 50 copies of the complete scriptures. So he took now and said, I want a copy of all of the Old Testament, all of the New Testament, 50 of them, and possibly for the first time the Old and New Testament came together as one book.

This was right in around three, somewhere between 300 and 400. Almost immediately, scholars began translating it into languages for Christians living in other parts of the world. See their heart, see the heart of men for thousands of years has been to get the scriptures into common tongue of the people.

It was important to the early church that as many people as possible have access to the scriptures. One of the most significant was the Latin version called the Vulgate Translation by Jerome. He spent 20 years living and studying in Palestine in order to make an official translation of Hebrew and Greek scriptures into Latin.

The Vulgate eventually became the official text of Western Christianity. So as time went on, Greek no longer was the common language and now Latin became the common language. So Jerome, this man, spent many years studying and he produced a Latin translation of the scriptures.

This happened because in the fifth century, the Latin-speaking Roman Empire fell in the fifth century and so Christian monasteries began collecting the biblical texts, especially the Vulgate. By this time, missionaries and others have brought copies to the British Isles. Everybody knows where Britain is.

They had brought copies of these translations to the British Isles and they were translating the Vulgate into the common tongue of the people there. But many rulers and church leaders felt the scriptures in the popular language of the people challenged the church's authority. Even though Latin had long ceased to be common language of the people, it had become a crime to possess or circulate non-Latin copies of the Bible.

So you can imagine if you were to go one of these Catholic services at this time, everything would have been done in Latin. The chants and the readings and everything would have been Latin and you wouldn't have understood it because it wasn't in your common tongue. So you would come and sit and listen in and sound beautiful, but you'd have nothing inside of you being convicted because you didn't know what it was saying.

So there was a, we call it the Dark Ages, there was a period of time between this from the fifth century when these translations started coming into the English British Isles and then them being stopped. There was a period of several hundreds of years with nothing but being spoken in a Latin, which was not a language people knew. Late in the 14th century, a Christian named John Wycliffe translated the scriptures from Latin.

So he took the Latin Vulgate and he translated it into English, which was the common tongue of the people, and it was completed the year he died. The authorities did all they could to suppress this English Bible, including digging up his body after he was already dead and burning it again. That's how mad they were.

And I hope you see how important this is and how Satan tried so hard. They banned the use of any new translation and many people were persecuted for copying or reading translated scripture. The English people were so hungry to hear the scriptures read in their own language, but copies had to be made by hand and therefore they were scarce and they were very expensive.

That was in the 14th century. In the middle of the 15th century, a printing breakthrough occurred. Many of you have heard of the Gutenberg Press.

A German goldsmith named Johann Gutenberg invented a press. This allowed books to be printed on a machine instead of by hand or a woodblock. The first large book to be printed on his press was a Bible in Latin.

However, by the middle of the 16th century, the Latin Bible had been translated and printed in 14 other languages. Around this time, a young man named William Tyndale translated the New Testament from Latin to Greek. This time Tyndale did it from Greek.

Now remember, Latin came later, so Greek was even before and closer to the original. He translated a New Testament from Greek into English and it became the first printed English New Testament Bible because it was done on the Gutenberg Press. Copies were smuggled into England and secretly purchased and read.

Tyndale started a translation of the Old Testament, but he was betrayed, arrested, and publicly executed. His last words were reported as, Lord, open the eyes of the King of England. His prayer was answered three years later when the first authorized Bible in the English language was called the Great Bible and it was published as a result of King Henry VIII, his injunction that an English Bible was to be placed in every parish or we might say church building.

People flocked to the churches to hear the scriptures read in their own language. I heard it was called the Great Bible once because it was huge and they changed it to the pulpit so it wouldn't be taken. Early in the 17th century, King James I authorized a new translation.

This translation is known as the authorized or King James Version, but it was only the beginning of English translations. Since this time, there have been close to 900 English translations. This couple that it's also been translated into over 2,000 languages makes the Bible the most read, the most translated, one of the oldest and the best-selling books in history.

So that's a quick little history on the Bible. Now I want to talk for a little bit about is the Bible accurate? Can we trust the Bible? Now let's just take a step out. We're not even going to the Bible yet to prove anything about the Bible, but is the Bible itself accurate? Well, there's a little research that's been done.

Some of our oldest writings we have of secular writers, people who just wrote not for religious reasons. We have Plato's, it's called The Republic. We have Julius Caesar who wrote Gallic Wars, and we have Homer who wrote Iliad.

Plato wrote his document around 400 years before Christ, but the earliest copy we have is from the 9th century, so 400 years before Christ, 900 or 800 something years after Christ is the earliest copy we have, and we only have seven copies. That's a span of 1,300 years from the time he wrote it to the copy we have in our hands today. There's a 1,300 year span.

Julius wrote his 100 years before Christ, and our earliest copy is also from the 9th century. That's about a thousand years, so the first was 1,300 years from our earliest copy to the time he wrote it. Julius is about a thousand years, and we have ten copies, and Homer wrote his 800 years before Christ, and our earliest copy is 400 years before Christ, so that's a 400 year span, and there's 643 copies of that, and of all the copies we have, they're 95% accurate to one another, and no one doubts their accuracy.

No one goes out there and says, well, we're not really sure if Homer really wrote this, or Plato really wrote this. They trust it. Now let's listen to those numbers.

They're 95% accurate, and they have a 1,300 year span, a thousand year span, and a 400 year span. Now let's look at the New Testament. The New Testament was written between about 50 years and a hundred years after Christ.

The earliest copy we have is from 125, so that's a span of 25 years versus a thousand, 1,300, 400, 25 years. We have over 24,000 copies of it in Greek and Latin and other languages, and all of those Greek copies, 99.5% are accurate to one another. Wow.

Okay, the Old Testament was completed before Christ. The earliest copy we have is about 900 years CE, which would be after Christ, and I don't have the number here, but anyway, the span is 1,300 years. That's a long time.

We were looking earlier at some of the other documents, 1,300 year span, and so for a very long time, that's all we had, a 1,300 year span. Well, back in 1947, some people made a discovery. They found a cave, and inside of it were these Dead Sea Scrolls.

They got those scrolls out, and they were found to be the Old Testament manuscripts, and they were dated before the time of Christ. Now remember, our last manuscript was after the time of Christ, 900 years after, but this was dated to before the time of Christ of books from the Old Testament. They found two manuscripts of the book of Isaiah, and they compared it, and between the ones we had and the ones we just discovered, they were 95% accurate, word for word.

The only differences, really not the only, but the major differences were in spelling and slip of pen, so that should give you some confidence. If we can trust Plato and Homer and Iliad, sorry, not Iliad, but the other guy, Homer, Julius, and Plato, if scholars can trust them, we can trust the scriptures that they are accurate. It was written by 40 authors over 13 centuries, and I didn't know this, on three different continents the scriptures were, Africa, Europe, and Asia.

All right, if I have time, I'll try to come back to this, how did the New Testament books get selected, but I want to talk about that, but I want to get into the meat of this sermon, and that is, I want to talk about what do the scriptures say about themselves. What does Jesus say? What does the Bible say? What do men of God say about the scriptures? I think one of the most, and we all know this verse, but let's go there, it's in 2nd Timothy chapter 3, this is probably one of the clearest passages in the Bible itself that speaks about itself and what it is and its purpose. 2nd Timothy chapter 3, and we're gonna go to verse 15, Paul is writing to Timothy, this Timothy is a disciple of Paul's, Paul is an apostle, and he is encouraging Timothy to remember the things he has taught him, remember that there's going to be evil men coming, that he needs to remain strong, and he reminds them that from a young child, verse 15, thou hast known the Holy Scriptures.

Now I'd like to ask this question to you, you know, sometimes we think that, well, when I get older, you know, I'm this age, when I turn 30, when I turn 40, I'll get serious, I'll get serious about reading the scriptures, but notice what Paul says about Timothy, he says, from a child, a young boy, thou hast known the Holy Scriptures. Notice the word holy, Moses was told, take your feet off, take your shoes off, because you're standing on holy ground. It's something set apart, it's something different than other books.

You have known the Holy Scriptures, which are what? Able to make thee wise to salvation. One of the main purposes of scriptures is to convict you of sin, and show you you're standing before God, and then show you hope that you can be saved. Then he goes on through faith, which is in Jesus Christ.

I'm going to take a quick side note and say, how many Christians I've seen, they grow up and they use the Bible to find all of their doctrines, and who Jesus was in salvation, but then they want to then just start throwing things out, right, and just start making their own religion, and deciding how they want their version of Christianity to go. But yet, you wouldn't even known about a Jesus, you wouldn't even known about a salvation, if it weren't for this book. So you either take the thing, and go with it all the way, or don't take some of it, and then decide to re-engineer it on your own.

And so he tells him, as a child, you've known the scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation. Verse 16, he goes on, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. We'll stop there.

This means, breathe by God. You think of the very beginning of time, when it says, God spoke. You know, if you feel yourself speaking, you can feel breath coming out.

As you breathe and speak, it takes breath to speak. And so, when this is talking, this is, this verse is saying, what Paul is saying to him, is all scripture, everything that is considered scripture, is given by God's breath. It's given by his own voice.

It says in another passage, as men, how does it go, holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit. All scripture is given by inspiration. It's not just a book we can go to and say, well, I think, you know, I think that in this area, that's his opinion.

But in this area, I'm going to take it serious. It's all given by inspiration of God. It's breathed by God and is profitable.

There's a profit to it. What is our profit for reading? It's for doctrine, or we could say for teaching. It's for reproof.

I wrote down what reproof means, if I can find it quickly here, or it could be used rebuking. We would use reproof for rebuking. So sometimes we need to be rebuked in what we're doing.

And the scripture can be used for that. It's for correction. It can correct us as we read the scriptures.

It can show us we're on a wrong path. Just like the police officer pulls you over and said, did you know that you were just driving through a school zone? You're going 50 and it's 25. There's little children out here.

Okay, sorry, officer. I had that happen once. I didn't realize it.

And he was gracious. But sometimes the Lord does that. As we read the scriptures, he says, hey, you're on a wrong path.

Without it, we wouldn't know. Without a tape measure, we wouldn't know where to cut that thing. Without a caliper, the machinist wouldn't know how tight and how close he is.

The scriptures are there to correct us and for instruction in righteousness. Instruction comes from the same word when it says, father, bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Nurture.

As you feed your children, you take care of them, you nurture them. The scriptures are here to nurture us in the spirit as a father to his son. Instruction in righteousness.

And what's the goal? So we have all those things for what? That the man of God may be perfect, complete. That's another distinctive that many churches would not preach anymore. They would preach.

It's about salvation. And then it doesn't matter about your works. But this clearly says it does matter about your works.

It matters that the scriptures correct us and bring us to perfection as we mature and as we become complete through thoroughly, thoroughly, sorry. Or as you can imagine, all the way impermeating your whole heart, taking over, furnished unto all good works, which means to complete or to finish. So God's goal for your life is that we would be a light, as Jesus said, on a hill that men may see our good works and glorify the father.

It's it's about his glory in the end. It's about knowing him. But the way we get there is by the scriptures, which lead us to the good works because we have read and we've been convicted.

And he reminds us through the day we've been. My wife has been listening to a lady who was in prison, I think, in China or something. And it was amazing how much from the little child she had memorized scripture.

And so now she's sitting in prison. Every time she would doubt, every time she would have a fear, every time she would get discouraged, a scripture would come into her head and God would encourage through that. Now, I'm not saying God can't encourage outside of scripture, but he sure does like to use scripture because it's his own word.

Right. And so he can bring us to a perfect man, to a thoroughly completed man that's honoring him with his good works. But he does it through the scriptures.

He does it through the Bible. And so we can see very clearly from this passage alone that it's a inspired by God. God was the one who breathed it, wrote it, moved them.

Men were writing it. But as Peter said himself, he says, for the prophecy did not come of old time by the will of men, but holy men of God spake as they were moved. So you can imagine them speaking and writing.

And as they were writing, the Lord was putting things in their heart, just like this morning while I was preparing and I was thinking through what would I say? Boom, a scripture would pop in my heart. Oh, yeah. So I'd remember to look that up.

Oh, yeah. Put that in. And then I'd be praying and reading through.

OK, what else? Oh, yeah. Another scripture pop in. That's how the Lord works.

That's how the Lord worked in these prophets of God as they wrote these books and these epistles. He moved them. OK, let's move on.

In Psalms, it says we can turn there. We're not going to have to turn to every one of these passages. I'm just going to quote them to you.

But in Psalms, chapter twelve, let's look at another very key understanding of scripture and what it speaks of itself. Psalm twelve or six. It says here the words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in a furnace of fire, purified seven times.

Thou shall keep them, O Lord. Thou shall preserve them from this generation forever. So we can see here that when God speaks, they're pure.

When God speaks. They're not something that can be a lie. Jesus said to the Pharisees at one point, he said, the scriptures cannot be broken.

Interesting concept. The scripture cannot be broken. He's trying to make a point with them.

And he says, and the scripture cannot be broken to make his point as he's quoting this. In other words, when God says something, it's pure. It's truth.

It's undefiled. And it can't be broken. So we can trust in the words of the Lord.

And it says also in this verse that it's like silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. It's not just one haphazard, you know, quick little jot. And it's not quite all the way there.

But it's been gone through and purified seven times as silver. And with silver, as you purify it, all the dross comes to the top and you take it off until it's perfect. And it's it's ready to be sold in the same way.

The word of God is like that. And then it says, Thou shall keep them. Thou shall preserve them from this generation.

So not only are they pure words, but they're kept words. They're preserved words. They're something we can look to and put our trust in.

I won't turn to this one, but in Psalm one, 1942, David says, So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproaches me, for I trust in thy word, for I trust in thy word. David trusted in his word. Turn to Psalm 138 too.

And here we can also at the latter end of this verse, it says, I will worship toward thy holy temple. I will praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth. And here's the truth we can learn.

For thou has magnified thy word above all thy name. What kind of importance does God put on his word? He puts it above his own name. Isn't that interesting? That not only is it something we can trust and that's pure, but even God himself puts his word above his own name, which is an amazing concept for me to ponder.

In other Psalm, David says, thou has, sorry, he says, the word, thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. The scripture can be to us when we are not knowing which way to turn, when we are feel in the dark. The scripture can be a light, it says, to our path and give us guidance.

That's found in Psalm 119 105 in Hebrews 4 12. The scripture tells us of itself and it talks about it being a powerful, alive, sharp, two edged sword that can pierce into our hearts and divide asunder and discern our thoughts and our intents. And I want to take a quick little, little bunny trail and I'm going to make it real short, but sometimes we read the word of God and we think, well, what's the difference between that and the scripture? And I'll say this, it's like J.B. Weld.

You need two parts. What good is half J.B. Weld? Like if, if we really needed to weld some metal together and we, and we just stuck half the goo on and walked away, you'd come back the next day and it'd just be like bleh, right? But you need two parts. It's a two part epoxy.

As soon as you put those things, two things together, it's like a chemical reaction goes on. And we watched a video on how amazing J.B. Weld is compared to all the other one part glues. It's phenomenal how well it holds up under pressure.

And it's the same thing with the Bible. If you come to the scripture with three ingredients, number one, a humble believing heart, okay? A humble, because God resists the proud, right? He's not going to show you anything if you come there thinking it's all about you and what you can learn and teach, right? If it's about you wanting to know God, humble believing heart. That's one part.

The second part is the Holy Spirit. Jesus says to the Pharisees, search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life, but you've never heard his voice, neither does his word abide in you. So once again, you can have the scriptures, but if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you don't have a humble believing heart.

And then the last part is the scriptures. Now you throw all those together in a big mix and you're gonna get like J.B. Weld out of it. You're gonna get the Word of God.

See, the Word of God is not gonna do anything in your life and be alive and powerful and all of these things if you don't come to it with a humble believing heart. If you don't have the Holy Spirit, you have to have the Holy Spirit in you, convicting you and making this alive. Okay, so we're gonna get off that bunny trip.

And so it's alive, it's powerful, and it discerns our thoughts and our intents. It's what it says about itself. Peter, one of the Apostles of Jesus, said this.

He said in 2nd Peter 1.4, he said, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises. Okay, are these not the promises of God? Where else are we gonna get the promises of God, right? What are you gonna make them up on your own? No, you're gonna get them from here. So it's been given unto us the exceeding great and precious promises, and there's many many pages of them, right? That by these you may be partakers of the divine nature.

You want to be more like God? You want to be more like Jesus? You want to be partakers of knowing God? It needs to come from here. It needs to come from faith, believing in the precious promises that he has given us and taking hold of them. And so we can see clearly that these words in here can help us become partakers of the divine nature.

Romans 10.17 says this, faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by through the Word of God. So another passage says we're justified by faith, right? It's not of works but by faith. So how do we get faith? Where do we get it from? We get it from here.

Where do we get convicted to do good works? We get it from here. It keeps coming back to here. And so you can see why would the devil want to throw this out? I mean, why would the devil want to cause people to question its accuracy, put out documentaries and books about, you know, is this really what it is? Is it really from God? Yea, hath God said.

Okay, so now let's look at how Jesus looked at Scripture. Turn to Matthew chapter 4. So we can see how the Bible considers itself. What does it see itself as? It sees it as sure.

It sees it as true. It sees it as something we can be trusted. It discerns.

It's alive. It's powerful. He puts it above his name to light for our path.

How did Jesus work with the Scriptures? Matthew chapter 4. I know we know this but let's look at a couple things out of this story. Jesus had just fasted for 40 days and it says he was led by the Spirit verse 1 to the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When he had fasted for 40 days and 40 nights he was a hungered.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine the temptation after 40 days to eat? The tempter came and he said if you are the Son of God, now let's just look right you really who you say you are, you know, if you're really the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Look at what he's also trying to get him to do. He's trying to get him to eat according to his command.

Not according to God's command but according to the devil's command. Break his fast by listening to the devil. But what did he answer? He said it is written.

Look how Jesus himself who had the Holy Spirit went back to Scripture. Went back to the authority of Scripture. If this doesn't prove the authority of Scripture itself, Jesus used it as his tape measure, as his sense of rule.

It is written and he goes back and says man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. He shows here very clearly Jesus says it's not just about the food you eat physically but it's also about the food you eat spiritually which is the Word of God which we are talking about right now. How important that is.

He had that somehow memorized. He had that somehow in his conscience to say right back to the devil to resist him. That's a key thing we need to learn.

To resist the devil we need to know the Scriptures. Okay now watch what happens. The devil got a little bit smart.

So he takes him up on the holy city, setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple and saith unto him, if thou be the Son of God cast thyself down for it is written. He caught into this thing. He's like oh we're using Scripture now? I can do that too.

And so he tries to tempt Jesus back with Scripture. He says for it is written he shall give his angels charge concerning thee in their hands they shall bear thee up lest any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Now what does Jesus say? He says Jesus said to him it is written again.

Okay now let's think about that for a minute. Truth is like a bird. A bird has two wings right? What would a bird be like if it only had one wing? Well we've done that before.

We've clipped our bird's wing just one side of it and then you let it go and just right just plummets to the ground. Bird needs both wings right? Truth is like a bird with two wings. It needs to be balanced.

See the Scripture says study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be shamed rightly what? Dividing. See it needs to be balanced and Jesus was the perfect picture of balance. So here the devil comes with an actual Scripture tempting him to commit suicide and what does Jesus say? He says it is written again.

See he knew that Scripture he knew how to balance it properly and he knew how to resist the devil once again even though the devil used Scripture. Isn't that interesting? Devils and demons can use Scriptures to bring you down. That's why the Scripture says try the spirits whether they be of God.

One way we can try the spirits is bring it back to the ruler. Bring it back to the book. And so he says it is written again.

Jesus most likely knew the passage that says thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee right? Against God. He had hid these things in his heart. Think of the time when he was a little boy and where did his parents find him? At the playground or however old he was maybe 12 but they found him sitting at the temple reasoning with the scholars and they were he wasn't just asking them at a little child.

And so here he is now able to stand with the devil and resist him with Scripture. He gets tempted again and Jesus says once again this time he tempts him with power all power. The devil says I'll give you everything if you'll just fall down in worshiping.

And Jesus says get behind me Satan for it is written thou shall worship the Lord thy God and him alone thou shall serve. And the devil left. So there he resisted him three times with Scripture.

One time he used the Scripture against the Scripture because he knew the right context and the right balance. All right I'm gonna skip another section. I'm clearly seeing that I have a lot of things.

We'll see what we have left over. But what does God think of studying the Scriptures? I just quoted it but I'll say it again 2nd Timothy 2 15 says study to show thyself approved unto God. Now if you look this up it's not the idea of a book study for knowledge.

It's the idea of us an apprenticeship like you would if I remember when I was young I wanted to become a machinist and so I went as an apprentice to learn how to be a machinist. Well that meant I sat in the machine shop I worked in the machine shop I swept the floors and they taught me a little bit here a little bit there they let me do different things as I apprenticed. This is the idea it's not just coming in here to learn knowledge but it's coming in here to learn how to do the thing.

Study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that kneeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth. And so the Scriptures themselves tell us to study but for the outcome as we read earlier of glorifying God with our good works of becoming a perfect man becoming complete not just for knowledge and I have been in that too much where in the end it was just for more knowledge. What does the Bible say about knowledge? It says knowledge puffs up.

Okay in Acts chapter 17 verse 11 we also see that I don't know if it's Luke or who is saying it but you can turn there if you want Acts 17 verse 11 it says talking about the Thessalonicans and the Bereans you probably heard the term are you a Berean Christian. We can read verse 10 it says and the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night to Berea who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews and then it says about these Berean Christians they were more noble than those in Thessalonica. Isn't that interesting like the Bible itself is comparing two churches and it says this one was more noble it had it was more in the right place the church of Berea and why in that they receive the word with all readiness of mind and search the scriptures daily whether those things were so so that when they were here they were ready their minds were alert they were listening they were receiving they were eating it up right but then they would go home and they would say is that true they would search the scriptures of course they probably didn't have the scriptures at home but wherever they search them they would search them and they would say are these things true and when you think about that they're searching Paul's words Apostle Paul they're still searching to see if even what he was saying was right according to the scriptures now we know that nowadays we know that Paul is right and we don't have to question that but in their day they weren't sure so what do they do they took it to the scriptures to see and prove if it was right and that's what we have to do with everything a new book comes out oh it sounds so exciting okay take it to the scriptures is it does it match up with the scriptures and the Bible says when you do that you're in a noble place so I can I can clearly see that according to those verses and I already quoted the one from Jesus when he's a little child going to the synagogue that he wants us to be students of the scripture I have a couple quotes from the early church these are men that lived after the time of the Apostles in the church and so listen to their quotes these are men that were were in the middle of this group called the Gnostics and the Gnostics were wanting to kick you know change all the understandings of Christianity they were wanting to say Jesus wasn't who he said he was these were men that were in just a very harsh time of persecution many people were being killed and what did they say they said we have known the method of our salvation by no other means than those by whom the gospel came to us they're saying we listen to the people that brought the gospel to us which gospel they preach but afterward by the will of God they delivered to us in the scripture so they're saying we stick to the scriptures because that's the people who are with Jesus that's the people who would know the most likely would know the truth if there were any origin said no man ought for the confirmation of doctrines to use books which are not canonized scripture if you want to confirm a doctrine if you want to make sure it's right go to the scripture he says don't use other books Cyprian said for those things are to be done which are they're written if it be commanded in the Gospels or in the epistles of the or the apostles then let this holy tradition be observed in other words he's saying go to the scripture if they're in the Gospels in the book of Acts or in the epistles then we can do and participate in those traditions and then and anthanasia said the holy scriptures given by inspiration of God are of themselves sufficient toward the discovery of truth and then he says a divine scripture is sufficient above all things I'm out of time I if I had time I would have talked a little bit about what the King James translators said about scriptures I would have talked a little bit about how do we get our books in the New Testament if you're interested in those things I can tell you afterwards but in closing I want to say this where are you headed I had this thought this weekend it convicted me if you were on a Navy ship and you were out in the in a boat and this boat has orders it's gonna go from here and in three days it's gonna be over there you get to your destination okay from here we're gonna go over there and and when you get in the boat that's what you do you get there you get to your destination but along the way you notice there's these logs and plastic floating around in the sea and they just go or they want you know they just float around on the top of the ocean and they're here one day and they're over here another day and they're over here another day which one of those better pictures your life the ship or the logs and the plastic are you becoming a student of God's Word are you becoming a studier of the scriptures and are you letting are you memorizing them so that if we do go to persecution God can use that so that he can correct you in the day when you are in erring in your path or are you more like the logs that are here one minute to know over here another day and are you taking these things serious are we taking the scriptures serious we've all grown up with this and it's easy to it's easy for me and and I can sense it in my heart to just be like yeah it's a Bible I'll get it when I can when other generations they had nothing and when they could get their hands on it they would die for it right to have it in their own language and we have so many translations now so where are we at are you like the ship with a course and they are gonna be here in three days I'm gonna memorize this verse this week and by the end of the week I'm gonna have that memorized this week I'm gonna read through this chapter in this chapter I'm gonna let the Word of God not just read through the Bible but I'm let the Bible go through me which one of those are you are you like that ship that has that you're you're you're moving along and you're letting God change you and speak to you or you're more like the wood moving around you're there maybe today maybe next thing you know which one will it be and I'll just quickly say that I decided to preach this because we want to have some Bible studies on Wednesday nights from 615 to 715 and I had it predominantly with the youth in mind but anybody's welcome if they want to come and I just want to share some techniques on how I've learned to study and then we study together and we pick some passages of Scripture and we study it but we study it with the intention of becoming partakers of the divine nature not with the intention of just more knowledge but study it with a purpose with a course that we're headed so thank you for listening and I just pray that you've you've got a revived sense of thankfulness for the Word of God that we can read and we can be convicted by God bless you thank you very much Jeremy for that refresher in some ways in some ways new information at least for me about the Word of God what it is the scriptures it is written can we say that like Jesus said you mentioned the Bible study coming up on Wednesday night and just to clarify what's the first date sometime in December so I'm not sure we'll be notified is that right yeah first Wednesday in December I think Sunday is the first so maybe the fourth I think okay all right but you'll let us know and again that'll be 615 to 715 which means prayer meeting gets bumped back 15 minutes whenever we do the Bible study all right George in just a moment do you have a song ready for us okay before the song to somebody else have something like to share about what we heard this morning or any testimony what God's doing in your heart maybe a testimony of Thanksgiving because we are approaching a day that the world at least the church the nation I don't know if they do it in other nations or not but we call it Thanksgiving