Note: This sermon is the beginning of a new, occasional series on my church's Statement of Faith. I will be preaching from our Statement of Faith on the Sundays that we celebrate The Lord's Supper together.
Section 1 of our Statement of Faith is entitled, “Verbal Inspiration,” and it states: “We believe that all Scripture of the Old and New Testament is God-Breathed, is inerrant in the original writings and is the supreme and final authority in all matters of life, faith, and practice (2 Tim. 3:16, Matt 4:4, 2 Peter 1:20-21, Rom 15:4).”
This title, “Verbal Inspiration,” simply means that God’s involvement with the writing of Scripture extended all the way to the very words that the human authors chose to use to express their message. In other words, God didn’t just give the human authors of the Bible some grand and lofty ideas and then leave them on their own to put those ideas down in writing. That would’ve left the writing process vulnerable to all the imperfections of human beings.
For example, we’ve all experienced the frustration of having an idea in our minds but not being able to find just the right words to express it. In the end, we sometimes have to settle with an imprecise or incomplete expression of what we truly had on our minds.
So is that what we have with the Bible? Is it just the best attempt of the human authors to communicate all that God had placed in their minds? No – not at all! God’s involvement in the writing led the entire process from beginning to end, so that even the very words the authors chose to use were the words that God desired for them to use.
The first statement of this section says, “We believe that all Scripture of the Old and New Testament is God-Breathed.” What does this term “God-Breathed” mean? Well, it comes from 2 Timothy 3:16-17 [READ 2 Tim 3:16-17]. This picture of God breathing out the Scriptures tells us that he is the ultimate source and origin of the Scriptures. Even though it was actually human beings who put pen to paper in order to write the Bible, its message ultimately came from God.
Think of it like a musician playing a beautiful piece of music on an instrument. Yes, the musician uses the instrument to produce the sound, but the music is ultimately coming from the musician, not the instrument. So it is with the Bible – God used human authors to produce the documents, but the message is ultimately from him.
The second statement declares that the Scripture “is inerrant in the original writings.” This declaration means that the documents produced by the original authors were free of any mistakes or errors. Therefore, the Bible tells us the truth and nothing but the truth.
In this statement, though, why do we only focus on the original writings as being free of errors? The reason is that we know mistakes have been made in the copying process that has taken place from that time until now. For example, in 1631, a new edition of the King James Bible was printed in England that became known as "The Wicked Bible" because the printers accidently left out the word "not" in the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery!” Thus, their Bible made it sound like God was commanding everyone to commit adultery!
Now how do we know that this was an error? It’s because we have thousands upon thousands of other copies of the Bible that say, “thou shalt not commit adultery.” By comparing all of these copies together, we can spot locations in individual copies where mistakes have been made – such as in The Wicked Bible. By this process of comparison, then, we can eliminate those mistakes and know that we have an accurate copy of what the original authors wrote.
The final statement of this section says that the Bible, “is the supreme and final authority in all matters of life, faith, and practice.” Notice how comprehensive that statement is – the Bible is the final authority for how I live, what I believe, and for how we do things in the church. This respect toward the Bible is simply the logical response to the fact that the Bible is ultimately a message from God. He is our Creator, our Lord, our Savior, and our Master, so whatever he has declared for us is the standard by which we must measure all things.
Monday Matters
Now at this point you may be thinking, “This is wonderful information, Pastor Tim, and if I ever end up on Jeopardy it may help me to know what verbal inspiration means. But what difference does this make for my life?”
That is a fair – and very important – question! When we wake up tomorrow morning, we will have to deal with Monday matters all over again. We’ll have to get the kids out the door and get them to school, and perhaps little Johnny is falling behind in a certain subject and will have to wrestle with some complicated decisions about what to do. And perhaps you’ll head off to another day at a job that you don’t really enjoy, and you’ll put in one more day just so you can pay those bills that are breathing down your neck.
When you have to deal with those realities, what difference does it make that you know these truths about the Bible? In each sermon in this series, we’ll deal with this question, because it is very important to know how doctrine does connect with daily life.
In today’s case, the great comfort and help we receive can be summarized like this:
In the Bible, we have a source of divine wisdom and food for the soul.
In life, we have to deal with so many different decisions that can feel so complicated. Sometimes it’s hard just to form your own opinion, and then on top of that, you may have to sort through all kinds of advice from other people. It can all be so confusing, but in the midst of that confusion, we have a source of light, piercing through the fog, showing us the direction to take.
The Bible gives us a framework for thinking that is not based on the limited understanding and perspective of men. It comes from above the fray, from a vantage point of unlimited knowledge and wisdom, untainted by sinfulness, and unfazed by the passage of time. The Bible helps us to align our priorities in the proper order so that we can accurately weigh the various options that may be available to us in any situation.
So as we deal with the complexities of life, we don’t have to simply lean on our own understanding, which is so limited and filled with blind spots because of our own sinfulness. Instead, we can have the confidence that we are following a path that has been laid out by divine wisdom and infinite love. Our Statement of Faith references Romans 15:4, which says, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Remember that hope is the biblical optimism that we have through the instruction and promises of God. It is a biblical optimism, which remembers – as the Apostle Paul stated – that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God, but hope is optimistic nonetheless because it is confident in God’s ability to fulfill his promises.
So we can see how this divine wisdom is also food for our souls. The Bible nourishes us and sustains us spiritually when we grow so weary because of life in this world. Each one of us knows that even after we have fed our bodies, we can still be malnourished if we have not fed our souls. You can feast on the finest cuts of meat and the most delectable desserts and yet still be empty inside because your soul is fatigued and underfed.
But the Bible provides the nourishment and sustenance for our souls to give us spiritual energy so that we don’t have to feel beat down and worn out as we go through life. As Jesus himself said in Matthew 4:4, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” We find these precious words in his holy book, the Bible, and drinking them in will quench the thirst of even the driest soul.