MCC Podcasts
Theology Matters - Inspiration
this message, this big word that makes a big difference. We ask you Holy Spirit to be our teacher. And teach Lord not only through what's presented but through the discerning ears that receive the presentation. Quicken our minds so that when something's not quite adding up or there's something that we hear that can further our understanding, quicken our minds so that that can happen. We open ourselves to you and you alone. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen. Amen. I've got a couple of books up here. And I'm wondering is anybody have like some gum they need to discard, they need to get rid of some gum? No, what you do when you have to get rid of gum, you just grab a book or a magazine or something, right? And you rip out, it's just a common book, you rip out a page and you put your gum in, right? Close it all around and it's all sanitary. You put it in your pocket, you put it in your purse or you put it in the garbage can. What you would do if you had to do this here, right? Just grab a piece of paper and some book that airline magazine or whatever, do that, yeah. Got another book here. Says on the front, "Holy Bible." Let's see here, let's go to Matthew. Anybody have gum they need to discard? 'Cause we can, I've got some paper here, if you wanna just spit your gum into it. Anybody need it? Just spit your gum right in there, kind of close it up. Works really great, especially this nice, soft, special paper and then you can take that and throw it into the garbage. Now, do not throw anything at me. Here's what I wanna ask you. I wanna ask you an obvious question. And I wanna ask you to search yourself for the true answer. How many of you are the applications of the answer? How many of you sensed a little difference in your level of comfort when I ripped the page out of the first book and when I ripped the page out of the Bible? Did it feel different? Some of you are actually considering leaving this room right now. Because in our hearts, don't we sort of, 'cause I mean, come on. This is paper. This used to be a tree or two and it's got ink and words and thoughts. And some folks said, don't rip a page out of that. I mean, somebody could use that book but it's because of stewardship and somebody paid four or five bucks for this and why ruin a good book? And so you're uncomfortable with it. This used to be a cow, I think. Like that book, these pages used to be a tree. There's ink here, they contain thoughts. Gazillions of these have been printed. It's not like they're so rare that they're worth a lot of money. In fact, this one probably had not been touched for years before I went up in a forgotten and underused space, Arloft, which not too long from now is, oh, I forgot to tell you, the 29th, the 29th we're meeting here for a business meeting, you're gonna hear more about our building and our budget and everything, don't miss that. But you're gonna hear about us probably planning to rip that loft out, not too long from now as we're fixing this room. But this was lost up there in a forgotten box and a forgotten corner in an underused part of our facility and nobody knew this Bible was even there until I went up and grabbed it and pulled it down here and ripped the page out of Exodus in the first gathering and a page out of Matthew in this one. And then had the audacity to throw it onto the floor as though it were as common as a rock. Yet, you were much more comfortable with me ripping a page out of the first book, right? Then you were with me ripping a page out of the Bible, right? Yeah. You're still uncomfortable, right? You're still saying, how are you gonna make this happen? I knew I should have stayed a Baptist. What happened just now? Isn't it true that, among other things, what you're feeling right now based on what we just saw reveals sort of an inherent sense that's in all of us. That Bible is not just another book like every other book. Doesn't what we're feeling are discomfort with the facing the Bible reveal that. There's something in all of us, whether you're a follower of Christ or not, probably you're gonna have some level of discomfort with the facing of Bible, ripping a page out of the Bible, just for most of us seems somehow wrong, or wronger than tearing a page out of a Dr. Seuss book. I almost said Steinbeck, but that's just one step below the Bible. So yeah, all of us are convinced that that book is special. There's a difference between the Bible and every other book. I'm not defining the difference yet. I'm not arguing about what that means. All I'm trying to give us is a chance to experience or feel what we inherently sense or know or suspect to be true. And I'm aware of how uncomfortable it is to watch that. It's uncomfortable for me too. I actually had to do it. It was not easy for me to do that. But my point is this, we all are convinced. That Bible is not just another book. Yes, the cover is leather. Okay, and the pages are made out of paper. Yep, and here's the recipe for the ink and they print bazillions of them, but still there's something in us that knows it has value in our hearts. And we're right, the Bible is extraordinary. It's extraordinary, it's anything but common. But though many of us know that the Bible is special, and here's the point I wanna get at this morning as we take the next step in this series, Theology Matters, big words that make a big difference. Though many of us know inherently that the Bible is special, fewer of us know exactly why the Bible is special. If you're convinced in your heart, the Bible is not just another book. It's a special book. There's something different about it, something uniquely helpful and powerful about it. And it should actually be seen differently than I agree with you. I think you're right on that. But the question is why? And what I wanna argue this morning is this, that it's because of one of those big words that make a big difference. One of our theological words in this study that we feel the Bible is special. It's the word inspiration. We say that the Bible is the word of God. We say, and our church is convinced as are every one of our leaders, our pastors, and virtually everyone that's a part of our congregation in any way, at any level. But the Bible is somehow inspired. God had something to do with the authoring, and maybe even, I'd say more than maybe, the protection of it through the centuries. There's something special, it's inspired. And what I wanna do, and that's our big word for this morning in this series, inspiration. Not inspiration in the sense of you complete me, you inspire me, you watching your life causes me to hunger, to live differently. I'm inspired in that sense, that's a beautiful thing. And I think, in my experience, scripture does that. But that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about theology, and the understanding of scripture theological. We're talking about almost a scientific, or a theological sense of inspiration, a technical sense of inspiration. Why is the Bible special? Why did every one of us wish I would have not done that at some level? Why was it uncomfortable? Why is it still uncomfortable, and will be all day every time you think about it? Because we're, sure, the Bible is somehow special, and the reason it's special is because it's inspired. We're less in touch with why, very in touch with the fact that we know that's a special book. So we're gonna look at inspiration, the doctrine or the teaching of inspiration. We talk about the inspiration of scripture, what are we talking about? What does it mean? There's no way to take that thought and boil it down into 15 minutes of teaching and 10 or 15 minutes of, so what, of application. But we're gonna try, I boil it down to its most basic couple of truths. And the idea is to introduce the big word and talk a little bit about it, didactically teach a little bit about it, and then move to the big difference, the so what of this, which we promised you we would be doing with each of these words, and still get you out of here in 25 minutes. You ready to try that? Very basic. Boil it down, can't boil it down any more than this. But let's look first at the big word, this big word, inspiration, this big word that makes a big difference. The meaning of the word inspiration is vast. We use it different ways, but in the technical sort of scientific theological sense, it comes from the basic Latin word that actually meant to breathe out. And so the word inspiration evolves from that word, and biblical writers take the common language of the people and they use that common language to express the uncommon teachings of Christ in the word of God. But it means breathe that scripture, one of the most well-known expressions is in 2 Timothy 3, where the scripture says, Paul's saying that all scripture is inspired or breathed out by God. Everything when it comes to that scripture came somehow from God. I think of the illustration, I bought a 49er colored balloon yesterday. So by that common use of the word, if when I do this, I have just inspired this balloon. That's the word usage that Paul has at his disposal when he probably coins a phrase, we're not sure, there's very little to compare it with the use of the word, but when he in 2 Timothy says, all scripture is literally God breathed or God inspired, and you'll see that Latin root, even in that Greek word that he uses. This is what he's talking about. I've just inspired this balloon. Now let's move on because there are a couple of things that when you boil down what we mean by inspiration, if you just hold onto these two at the same time, well, at least have a sense for why it's so uncomfortable to rip a page out of that Bible, why we're convinced it's somehow special. When we talk about the inspiration of scripture, we mean to say at least two very basic things, vastly more should be added to this, but for now just these two. And they're both true at the same time. If you can hold them together tightly, you walk away with at least some introductory sense of what we mean by inspiration. One, we mean by inspiration as a Christian church that the Bible was written by people. Go to 2 Peter 3. 2 Peter 3, I'm gonna begin reading at verse 14. But yeah, I think a good example of how even the apostles understood that people were involved in the writing of this scripture. So then, dear friends, 2 Peter 3, 14, we turn the house lights on so that we might encourage you to actually follow along with the Bibles that are underneath the seat in front of you or that you're brought with you. It just seems appropriate that we actually open them and touch them on a day. We're talking about the inspiration of scripture, but we'll also have it up on the screen for you. So, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with him. Second Peter's consumed quite a lot with atrant questions about the return of Christ, eschatology, the study of end times, and how come he's taking so long and maybe he's just forgotten, fallen asleep. And that's sort of the general context of the book, but that's not where we're going with this. In that context are some examples of the points I'm trying to make with regard to inspiration. He says, bear in mind, verse 15, that our Lord's patience means rescuing our salvation. Just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him, Paul wrote, scripture's written by people. He writes the same way in all of his letters. So you have Paul's literary style showing up in all of his letters. He writes with the same kind of writing habits and word usages and sentence structures in all of his letters. Plus he writes with the same points, speaking in them of these matters, his letters contain, and you see Paul's style in this, some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction. So Peter's probably talking not only about concepts that are hard to understand, but I think even more so style that's hard to understand. Go read some of the Pauline letters. The guy was the king of the run-on sentence. And now I'm buried here under this verb and then you've gotta go pick up this direct object to find this other noun, another verb, and a sentence within a sentence without the privilege of parentheses. And sometimes you just scratch your head reading what Paul wrote. He soaks and he slips into visionary language and then back into more scientific language. He's all over the map when it comes to writing. He's not easy to understand. My point is this. Scripture was written by people. And you see that, for example, in the way Paul wrote, Paul is all over, his style, his words, everything, all over his writings. The words he would use to describe this, man's Pauline. You can tell the difference between a Pauline letter and a letter by Paul and a letter by John, and part by style, even if the headings weren't there to give you a hint. You could tell the same person didn't write these 'cause this style is different than this style. Talk about doctors, Zeus and Steinbeck. I mean, it can be as different as those two. So people wrote the scriptures. When you're understanding on inspiration, you have to start with the conviction, the freedom to say, the Bible was written by people. Theologian, August Strong, put it this way. He said, the biblical writers were pen men, not pens. Their styles are there. They wrote these texts. In other words, they were partners with God, not avatars of God. They were, their styles and their personalities, all of that of these writers, evident in the letters that these writers presented to us. Incarnation affirms that the Bible was written by people. I'm gonna stop there, you're with me on that. The Bible was written by people. That's the first basic statement of the incarnation, excuse me, of inspiration. The inspiration of scripture. The second point is this. We're talking about that big word inspiration. First, the Bible was written by people. Second takeaway is this. The Bible came from God. It was written by people and it came from God and is difficult as it is to merge those two concepts. We don't rightly understand inspiration unless we allow both of those to be true with equal force at the same time. It was written by people and it came from God. It's not just another book. In the same book, chapter one though, Peter writes, I'm always gonna remind you of these things even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. I think it's right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body. Because I know that I will soon be put aside as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me and I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things. In part Peter's gonna do that by writing things. For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power. We were eyewitnesses of His majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to Him from the majestic glory saying this is my son whom I love and with Him I am well pleased. He's talking about the amount of transfiguration experience where He's there and He sees things and hears things that were profound. We ourselves heard the voice that came from heaven when we were on the sacred mountain. And we also have, and now we're getting more to the nitty gritty of the point here that scripture comes, it's written by people but it comes from God. Peter says we also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable and you will do well to pay attention to it as to light shining in a dark place which it often is, isn't it? Until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts above all you must understand no prophecy of scripture, no literally prophecy put into writing, scripture just means writings, came about by a prophet's own interpretation of things. For the prophecy never had its origin in the human will but prophets though human. You see the merging of these two concepts here. Spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. You have this beautiful partnership between the best of what's human and I say the best of what's divine but it's all good. There's emerging there strong that same theologian that gave us the quote about the writers of scripture were pen men, not pens. In other words they didn't just go into a trance and then wake up and there was a finished epistle in front of them. Also says that scripture is not exclusively human, neither is it he says exclusively divine. There is this divinely orchestrated but humanly involved cooperation between the apostles, the writers of scripture they weren't all apostles but most of them were. And the one who actually gives us the scripture this inspiration happens in that way. It was written by people but it came from God in its most basic form. That's what we mean by inspiration. It was authored with the pens of men but it was breathed out by God. Let me in this section by giving you a little bit of a technical definition of inspiration. I didn't make a slide for this and I realized too late that I should have but here's what we're talking about. By the inspiration of scripture, we mean that God worked through and in cooperation with human authors employing their styles, their temperaments and their contexts as they wrote the original documents to deliver his perfect authoritative written message to humankind, this partnership. It was written by people but it comes from God. Now that's the big word, inspiration but what's the big difference? What's the so what of that? Jeff, when he introduced this series, Pastor Jeff promised we're not just gonna give you lectures we're gonna talk about the so what's and this is a limited list. I encourage you to think about more applications. If that's true that this was written by humans what besides what art said is also true? If that's true that it comes from God, what else does it mean for me and what other applications are there for me? But here are a couple that are obvious to me. I'm talking about the big difference that that big word makes. If the Bible was written by people then it must be interpreted with the same rules of interpretation as all other human literature. If the Bible was written by people and therefore employs the styles, the language, the contexts, the experiences of people in the writing, then I use the same rules of interpretation when I approach the Bible that I use when I approach a love letter that I got from my wife. I know what words she tends to use to mean this. I know the context from which she writes. I know the person. I might even know how she was feeling on the day she wrote that letter. I might know what argument we had before she wrote the letter and what she intended that letter to accomplish on our relationship. But I'm going to gather everything I can possibly gather to understand the author in order to come to a conclusion about what the author meant by what the author said and then I'm going to get the meaning of that particular letter. Now from there I might go draw application from that letter but I use certain interpretive rules that are, we don't even think about these interpretive rules half the time. We do the same thing when we talk verbally. I use those same interpretive rules when I come to the scripture because the scripture is written by a person. Who had a context? Who had choices in language? Who tended to use agape to mean love instead of filleto or filleto to mean this instead of agape? I mean you can't just come to the scripture and say agape, you know it's agape filleto and eros the three different ways you can say love and grief. You can't just come to the scripture and say agape always means this and filleto always means this kind of love and eros always means this kind of love. It's not that simple. It's like what did Paul tend to use? If Paul wants to use eros in a new way to actually mean godly love, he's free to do that. You have to figure out that he meant that. You see what I'm saying? There are interpretive rules and it demands that we think when we come to the scriptures. If the scriptures are written by people we use the same interpretive rules to understand the meaning of scripture that we would use to understand the meaning of any other human literature. And it's a violation to reassign meaning. If Brenda wrote me a love letter, I don't have the privilege to interpret it as an eviction notice. That's not what she intended. Do you get that? But I think that's sometimes what we do with the Bible. Well you can do all your scientific stuff that scares the Holy Spirit away and you're overthinking everything. But this is what the Spirit's telling me that text meant. That text means one thing and one thing only. It means what Paul meant for it to mean. It means what Luke meant for it to mean. And then from there we find application but we interpret the scripture just like we interpret any other human literature. Well, genre, you don't read ecclesiastes the same way you would read a history book, different purpose, different style context, authorial content, so on and so forth. That's the first application. This first big so what if the Bible's written by people? Secondly, if the Bible's written by people then the reading, and I've already implied this, but the reading and interpretation and application of the Bible is a spiritual exercise but my point here is it's not only a spiritual exercise. It is also an intellectual exercise. There's, please get this. There is nothing inherently spiritual about diminishing the value of the intellect applying our brain and thinking. That's not the opposite of being Spirit-led. In fact, that's, can you hear this? That's the essence of being Spirit-led. Just like God employed the brains and experiences of authoritative authors and breathed truth into them to write the scripture, he's employing the brain and the experiences and whatever education, whether formal or informal we can bring to the interpretive task today. So the Bible's written by people. It's to be interpreted by the same interpretive rules as all other human literature, and it is a spiritual exercise, I'll get to that now, but it's not only a spiritual exercise, it's an intellectual exercise as well. And so it's incumbent upon the Christian to do all he or she can do to develop his or her ability to think when we come to scripture. Doesn't mean if you don't have a degree in Bible interpretation, you have to depend on somebody else to tell you what's going on there. No, it's bigger than that. One of my pastor growing up was quoting somebody else, no doubt, when he said that the Bible is what I say, a lake that a lamb can wade in and an elephant can drown in all in the same lake. I mean, it's as deep as you need it to be and as accessible as you need it to be. Okay, let's move to the next and last point. The Bible is written by people, there's some of the big difference. But the Bible came from God. So what does that tell us? Logically, this is a big so what for me. If the Bible carries, if the Bible came from God somehow in some fashion, it carries with it the characteristics of God. It at very least represents and explains the characteristics of God and the nature of God. And if that's true, if you'll give me that, then it's incapable of anything God is not capable of. So if that Bible came from God, I'm gonna be really careful to conclude that it can deceive me. Because God's not gonna be about deceiving me. It's reliable from cover to cover, properly and intelligently understood being led by the Spirit. There's that partnership again. But it takes on in some way, the value is the character that's not quite the right word, but of its source. It's incapable of anything God's not capable of. Can't take that too far because it's not really precisely presented. But can you get the gist of what I'm trying to say? If I can trust God, I can trust his communication to me. Secondly, if the Bible came from God, then there's another dangerous way in which it's more than another book. If it came from God, it's prescriptive, it's authoritative. In other words, the Bible doesn't just describe someone's life, it prescribes a way of life. The sermon on the Mount is dangerous teaching. If that is word of God, and I'm absolutely convinced that it is, then that's not just Jesus saying, here's something you might wanna consider, for love your enemies. That is God saying, as a matter of fact, write it down, stamp it on your heart, and live this dangerous life. Love your enemies. That's prescribing a way of life. When it talks about forgiveness, that's a prescribed way of life. It's hard to get there, but that's where we're going. If the scripture says that's where we're to go, does that make sense? If it comes from God, it's prescriptive, it's authoritative. And once we figure out what it's saying, what the author meant, by what the author said, and then we move from that to a spirit-led, and usually done in community, its exploration of the relevance of what the author said, where to live that way, and to find strength to live that way. If it comes from God, it's prescriptive. It's trustworthy because God is trustworthy. It's prescriptive, it's authoritative, because as we sang in some of these songs, Jesus isn't just our nice, fancy, convenient rescuer. He's our Lord. The word we don't use much anymore. Let me put that in modern vernacular. He's our boss. He's our leader. And he's leading us in such a way that we're invited into the changes he wants to see made in his creation, including my heart being repaired, my relationship being restored with God, my sins being forgiven, and my or our corporate investment in a different world, a world that's vastly different, mightily different than the world we see. Both of those things at the same time. So just a couple of thoughts about inspiration. It, the Bible is written by people, but it comes to us from God. If it's written by people, then it gives us some idea of how it's to be interpreted with that in mind, and how it's to be followed if it came from God. I wanna end this morning, this message, and then we're gonna pray together a little bit by coming back to this balloon, giving you yet another idea of inspiration, but how this all fits together. If I take and inspire the balloon, what I breathe in is in there, right? But when it shows itself, when it comes out of there, when the people respond to what God breathed into them, it comes out sounding a lot like the balloon, without even seeing, if your eyes were closed, and I said, "I just breathed into something," and you wouldn't know what it was, but when I let the air out, you would be able to say, "Oh, you breathed into a balloon, "you're letting there out of a balloon." That's how inspiration works. God breathes it in, but when it comes out, the fingerprints, the styles, the sounds of the authors are there, but it's still the breath of God. Inspiration, a big word that makes a great big difference. Ladies and gentlemen, it's past time that Christian people rediscovered, recommitted to, revolute the Bible. The word of God. If you're looking for a church that isn't so heavy on the Bible, kind of refers to it once in a while, knows it's there, but isn't all committed to it. Probably need to keep looking, 'cause that's not our church. We're gonna be intelligent about our approach to Scripture, aware of how difficult it is to follow it, of the need for the Holy Spirit to empower us, to live these radically crazy, loving lives, but Marine Covenant Church always has been, is now, and I pray God always will be a church of the Scriptures, because the Bible's not just another book. We don't live in such a way that we treat it as though it were gum-wrapping to be thrown away. It is written by people, but it comes from God, inspiration of Scripture. Yeah, amen. Let's stand with me for a second, and then I'm gonna dismiss you in just a moment, but I thought it would be appropriate to respond to that by praying and allowing Scripture to guide us in our praying. And we're gonna do that with a portion of Psalm 119. Just close your eyes and listen to this. As I read this section, it's the handful of verses from Psalm 119. Many different words used to describe what in effect is, the Word of God, the written Word of God. They place yourself somewhere in this section of text. How can those who are young keep their way pure, by living according to your Word? Oh, Lord, I seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commandments. In fact, I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might keep my way pure, that I might not sin against you. Praise be to you, Lord, teach me your decrees. With my lips, I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees. I will not neglect your Word. Let's pray a couple of those lines together. Have you lost track with, or never discovered in the first place, the connection between housing the Word of God in your heart? The connection between that and living a life that's a redemptive, helpful, pure life. Would you ask God now in silence to restore your sense of that connection and your value of the contribution the Word of God makes to that life? Just in silence, pray that for a second. Seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commandments. I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might not sin against you. The text goes on, praise to you, teach me your decrees. A silent prayer that invites God to be very active in teaching us what He presented to us through inspired writers. Teach us your Word, teach us your decrees, reveal that to us, God. Give us the insight we need to understand what the text means by what it says. And as importantly, what that means for our life today. Teach us your decrees. And along with that, how to apply them in our context. Would you pray that prayer silently for yourself? Finally, it says, I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I delight in your decrees. I will not neglect your Word. What's implied there is I will not neglect your Word any more than I would neglect great riches that just happened to show up at my feet. I would bend down and pick them up and cherish them. Is that still true of you? Has it ever been true of you? It's like, eating honey to take in the teachings of Christ, the teachings of God in Scripture. Ask the Lord to restore that sense of value. It's like great riches to me. I delight in the Word of God. Lord, restore that delight. Create that delight. And how would you be dismissed with this blessing? [BLANK_AUDIO]