Albert Mohler | Apologetics Series: "The Bible Is God's Word"

one of the strangest realities of our our times is that our very secular age continues to be so haunted by the Scriptures little evidence of just in the current week book came out Tuesday by Stephen Greenblatt rather well-known author in terms of American public life he's writing about Adam and Eve in the year 2017 now make no mistake he doesn't believe that Adam and Eve ever existed he fallen on the heels of Bruce Feiler another popular writer who wrote a book just in recent months on Adam and Eve he doesn't believe that Adam and Eve existed but he does believe they're important nonetheless why because Adam and Eve continue to haunt the secular West the narratives about Adam and Eve found in Scripture and so it's interesting that just in the last several months have been a couple of very significant books written on Adam and Eve in whom they do not believe but nonetheless they can't escape they're trying to come up with some way in a modern secular world to deal with Adam and Eve which tells you that two people they don't even believe existed have the last laugh in the year 2017 and then recently just over the last couple of years there's been a recurring cycle just as there has been in so many previous decades especially since the early decades of the 20th century of people seeking to write about how we can still use the Bible even though we don't because we can't believe that it's actually the Word of God anymore and about every generation these books come out their least seven or eight of them out right now explaining that the Bible can still be useful even though of course we've crossed a great barrier of modernity that means it can be no longer taken as the Word of God in the nineteenth even in the eighteenth centuries Western elites thought they could finally overthrow the Bible and Western culture a new narrative and new authorities would come along the rise of modern science all the things that would come together to comprise the modern worldview they would push Christianity in general and Biblical Authority specifically further and further to the margins the problem is modernity hasn't delivered on its promises including the promise to drive the scripture to the margins these books that have been coming out in this cycle of trying to recover some usefulness for the Bible on the other side of abandoning its authority and inspiration they've basically attempt to take away the scandal that is central to the historic Christian faith of looking to the Bible as God's Word written and as the final authority Sola scriptura what I want us to think about this morning is that that is exactly the scandal and I would propose it as an unavoidable scandal furthermore I would suggest that the scandal is such that it can't be alleviated by saying that we can somehow renegotiate our relationship with the Bible so that we can reduce our claims about inspiration and we can reduce our claims about its truthfulness and trustworthiness and we can reduce its claims ultimately about its authority and and somehow tame the Bible so that it is more useful to us in this modern age those efforts are absolutely doomed to fail because and we find this in the scripture itself when the scripture shows up it refuses to be tamed this is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation as you know we're headed towards a major commemoration in terms of the here we stand conference at the end of October it's going to be October 31 through November the second and over the course of the last year many of us have been heavily involved and celebrating and commemorating even visiting the the great historic sites of the Reformation the Reformation has always been a great question mark to historians how in the world did this happen why is it had such a lasting effect one historian that caught my eye as I was preparing for this 500th year was an historian who asked this question he said how is it how is it the great question for this historian is how is it that within just a single generation in Germany people shifted from coming to church expecting to see the mass to Christians coming to church demanding to hear the scripture the fascinating question and this is a secular story and asking it how could it be that that in one generation people utterly transformed their understanding of what is supposed to happen when they come to church they came for centuries not expecting to hear the word but to see the mass and yet in just one generation they were coming to church demanding to hear the Bible it's because once they heard the Bible they demanded to hear it again and again and again and evermore as we're thinking about the question do we believe what we believe we believe and the fact that taking that question seriously means we actually need to look at some of the most important beliefs to the Christian faith and not only that the most important beliefs to our own existence and ask the question do we really believe what we believe we believe the purpose of apologetics is most often conceived as offering a rational defense of the faith the rational defense of the Christian faith and it is that it is very much that unapologetically that apologetics but the apologetic task is also clarifying the claims that we are making so in the task of apologetics we want to be very careful when we ask ourselves do we really believe what we believe we believe it make certain we're clarifying what we are to believe what the Christian faith teaches what Christians confess and what is found in Scripture so let's address that very question do we really believe that the Bible is the Word of God now I know if we gave a true/false test every single person in this room and almost every person listening to my voice will know how to answer that question is the Bible the Word of God true or false you check off true but do you really believe what you believe you believe about Scripture I want us to think about that question for just a moment is to intellectually once again kind of peel the onion layer by layer to understand the audacity of what we are saying because that audacity comes down to this not only are we saying that we believe that the Bible is the Word of God we actually believed that the Bible singularly is the Word of God but just imagine all the beliefs that are necessary in order to get there it's very easy for Christians to say I believe in God and I believe the Bible is the Word of God there's actually more to it than that just think about the beliefs that are stacked one upon the other that are necessary before we could ever get to the point that we could claim that the Bible is God's Word first of all you have to believe that there is a God there's no word of God without God now you might say well of course you have to begin with the existence of God but you have to understand an awful lot of modern people who want to find something in the Bible want to find something in the Bible without reference to God but as we're thinking about these layers of police we have to begin with the existence of God but that's not enough because the existence of a mere God does not get us to an in Scripture ated revelry it's not just the belief in a God so a deist believes in God believes that there was even a God who created the universe a deist believes in deity but a deus does not believe in the second belief necessary for us to get to the Bible's the Word of God that is the belief in a personal God we believe in a personal God we do not believe that the Word of God has come to us from an impersonal force some divine power inside and beyond the cosmos we believe in the existence of the one God who is personal he represents not only the fact that he has a personality by his existence he defines personality the personal nature of God means that as we come to understand person and personality even in the hemisphere this means the ability to relate to persons as persons in this case it is the divine creator a personal deity who has by His grace and for his glory created all things but amongst those things amongst those creatures those living things human beings made in His image who thus are also persons so our way of getting to the Bible's the Word of God requires us to understand that there's a lot of theology before we get to Scripture the belief in the existence of God but also our confidence in the existence of a personal God but then there's another level to this there's another layer in the onion that we've got to deal with and that is the fact that all of this is stacked upon the fact that there is a personal God who intends to speak to us this is another major factor in terms of the background of the Christian doctrine of Revelation God would have every right to exist would have every right to exist as he is there's a self-existent glorious personal gun and whenever have every right to have created us and never to have shown himself to us the creature is not owed revelation revelation is actually one of the first and clearest demonstrations of the fact that God is love God loves us so much that he did not leave us in the dark and in ignorance concerning himself ourselves and all things as we find in Scripture and as well you know he also has even revealed himself even his invisible attributes and the things that are clearly seen he's speaking revealing God such that everything he does towards us everything he does visible to us everything he does then becomes known to us is known to us is put before our eyes because He loves us you don't have to know me for long to know that one of my central mentors in the faith a man who had an inordinate influence on me as a very young man was one of the most influential evangelical theologians of the 20th century his name is Carl Henry Carl F H Henry he would always put the F H those two initials right in the middle dr. Henry was never one tempted to give a short answer to any question he had the gift of verbosity and the the gift of complex writing he came from a German background and the German simply make words by smashing them together they just get longer and longer and longer but in his way that german instinct but an english was he just hyphenated and and so he's known for all these massive hyphenated terms he he was never really accused of being a poet but on the doctrine of revelation I believe he was poetic I can remember in conversation with him when he kind of just dropped this definition of revelation and it caught my heart it's found in his five volume work god revelation and authority where he he says Christians need always to remember this that revelation is God's gracious self-disclosure in which he lovingly forfeits his own personal privacy so that his sinful creatures might know him my goodness that's exactly it we believe in a God who is a personal God who intends to communicate with us because he loves us he forfeits his own personal privacy so that who his sinful creatures those who had rebelled while we were yet sinners God revealed himself to us but that's not all just in order to get to the audacity of what we believe about Scripture we have to begin with the existence of God and then the existence of a personal God and the existence of a personal God who intends to communicate with his human creatures but we have to go step further and say we actually have to believe in a means of Revelation that effectively allows this self existent personal God to effectively we might say successfully communicate with his human creatures and those human creatures are not just human creatures finite human creatures not just creatures made in His image but sinful creatures and then of course the the audacity of the Christian revelation claim goes on from this it's a it's an audacity that again points to the particularity of Scripture we're not just saying that Christians have holy books we're saying that Christianity is dependent upon one book the Holy Scriptures the Canon 66 books is recognized by the church and the singularity as well as the particularity we we believe that amongst all the books that may be claimed as Holy in some sense or or inspired in some sense as in somehow showing a heightened religious consciousness we believe that of all the books the humanity has ever seen all the writings the humanity has ever recognized and said there must be something special to the nature of that book we claim that this book is not only the Word of God but is the Word of God and our claim of the inspiration of Scripture can be put this way we believe that all of this book is the Word of God and we believe that in written form this is all of the Word of God now if you don't feel the audacity of that just just imagine yourself sitting next to someone say on an airplane or in train you're in a context where you're speaking with someone maybe they have maybe they've seen the Gideon's Bible in the hotel and wondered what it is they see you have one and they say what what is that what is that you're holding in your hands what is it you're reading I'm not suggesting you try to peel the onion with them it's some kind of logical presentation but you better have that in your mind they better be at least in the background what you're gonna say is you answer that question you're not gonna say this is a holy book you're not gonna just say this is the Christians holy book it says this is the book we recognize and privilege amongst all others and above all others now you got to say we believe this is God's Word written we believe that every word of it is inspired of God not in the sense that it was somehow just generally directed towards God but that it has come to us by divine revelation from God the Christian truth claim is essentially tied to Holy Scripture as the Word of God written period there is no other access to Christianity so that that's a humbling recognition we just need to make one to the other we have no Christianity without this book we have no idea what Christianity is without this book we don't know who Jesus is without this book we don't know what the gospel is without this book we don't know how the world came to be where history is headed we don't know anything without the Word of God written now the Word of God written tells us as we know of natural revelation general revelation God has revealed himself in nature you can understand why as we spoke about believing that there is a God there are there are good reasons even without Scripture to believe that there is a God and not only that they're compelling reasons Paul says they are so the reasons are so evident in creation both in the world outside and then the consciousness that God has created in his human creatures inside of us made in God's image there is abundant revelation for us to know there is a God such that only the fool would say in his heart there is no God but that very same passage in Romans chapter 1 so essential to understanding ourselves tells us that the sinner Jesus or sin enters the picture corrupts that apprehension or reading of natural revelation and worships the creature rather than the Creator Paul in Romans chapter 1 by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit tells us that natural or general revelation is enough such that there is not one of us who has an excuse but it is not enough that we would be reconciled to God for that we need Jesus for that we must hear the gospel and that can come only by the preaching and by the teaching and by the telling of the Word of God BB Warfield helpfully described the doctrine of biblical inspiration as the church doctrine of inspiration just as the Reformers during the Reformation said the first mark of the church is the preaching of the word of God Warfield said that the doctrine of inspiration is the church doctrine such that where you find the inspiration of Scripture the divine inspiration of Scripture which he carefully defined where you find the Bible recognized as the verbally inspired Word of God you will find a church if it is constituted by that word well as we said we believe that all the Bible's the Word of God and the Bible is all the Word of God and we believe in the singularity of Scripture and its particularity and we believe that the Bible is not just the book for Christians but that it is the singular revealed and written word of God now at that point you say well the audacity really hurts at that point not only is that politically incorrect it's just downright awkward how are we to live amongst people who follow other face and and and read other books because if you talk to the average secular person about the Bible they're likely to think that Christians look to the Bible the way that other people and other faiths or what they might call faith traditions look to their scriptures but this is where a part of what we should do in the honesty of taking other faiths at face value in other words letting them define themselves to us as we define Christianity to them the Christian claim about Scripture is singular not just in its particularity we make the claim that this is God's Word written the claim we make about the scripture is actually a different kind of claim that is made in any other belief system any other major religion now when you say that of course you place Christianity in a line of continuity of God's revelation in Scripture to his people and so you would see biblical Judaism as the people of the book represented by the law and the prophets and you would understand a continuity even as we see a discontinuity between what we call the old and the New Testaments so we're going to leave historic biblical Judaism but let's look at the other religions of the world and and and the books that seem to go to those religions sometimes very clearly so when you look for instance at Islam you immediately give the Quran but Muslims do not look to the Quran the way Christians look to scripture there is no doubt about the claim made by historic Islam that the Quran is a divinely inspired book but the claims made about the Quran is a divinely inspired book are that there was no human element whatsoever to the inspiration of scripture you're not talking about an inspired author there's not the claim that Muhammad is the Prophet was an inspired author who by the the Spirit was led to write what became the Quran no Muhammad's merely a conduit through whom the Quran came all of the Quran it's it's a very similar claim of revelation as a matter of fact or inspiration to that of the Latter day Saints in terms of the the Mormon understanding of Scripture where you had Joseph Smith golden plates peep stones the the the essential revelation claim of Mormonism is not that Joseph Smith was inspired to write this but that Joseph Smith was the conduit actually in some ways kind of the Decipherer who was able to open the key and of course you have an open claim of Revelation there revelation continuing through through a profit you look at the Eastern religions and they're not even close to anything like Christianity there are sacred writings but the sacred writings do not have the authoritative didactic function by that acting we mean teaching they don't they aren't they aren't recognized as conveying either sacred history or propositional truth in a way that is essential to our understanding of Scripture the Bible for Christ's people the Eastern religions have a myriad of writing sometimes writings of a devotional nature sometimes writings about meditation and consciousness there are historical narratives most of which are not assumed to be received as historical but there's no propositional text there's there's no authoritative text as you would call the Eastern religions peoples of the book when I was in high school in the 1970s it was in the the the great age of the cults in the United States and it was a part of the the entire culture of the 60s and the 70s the rise of what later became known as new religious movements or alternative religious movements and this included the unification Church known as the Moonies and and most of you are far too young to know what it was like to go to an American Airport and to have to go through successive bands of cultists trying to give you their propaganda before you get on an airliner but that's just the way that it was you went to a major American airport the most visible group was always the Harry Krishna's and so I have more than one copy of the the book they handed out which was the bhagavad-gita as it is and of course Americans will look at that the bhagavad-gita as it is and usually lavishly Illustrated and it's a heavy book they had to work out in order to bring all of these into the airport to distribute them but you you would have the bhagavad-gita as it is and I can still remember thinking okay I should try to read this young evangelical Christian I should read the bhagavad-gita as it is and as I read it I just realized this isn't anything like the Bible in other words what I assumed is a teenager handed the bhagavad-gita as it is is that this would be a similar kind of book but telling of different gods in a different story it was a completely different kind of literature altogether so when people assume they say well you know the Bible is the Christians book in that sense we have to remind ourselves that the Bible is God's book the Bible is God's Word that he has given to the church and its uniqueness it's very apparent to any who actually reads only the Bible but these other books as well the Bible's claim to inspiration includes multiple authors multiple genres clear historical claims propositional statements and of course progressive doctrinal teaching the audacity of the Christian revelation claim concerning Scripture is is what we call verbal plenary inspiration and I want to emphasize that point very clearly because I believe that the the Bible's Authority rightly confessed by the church depends upon our clear affirmation of the verbal we say plenary means full every word inspired every word fully inspired the verbal plenary nature of the inspiration of Scripture again that is something different than his claim and and it's it's a magnificent claim when you understand it because it's it's not just that the human agents of Scripture were mindless conscious less nests vehicles or conduits through which revelation came but rather they are the inspired human authors of Scripture the key text here is 2nd Peter chapter 1 verse 21 I just remind us of the text because here you have I believe the tessin so the definition of biblical inspiration for the sake of time I'm going to begin at verse 19 and we have something more sure the prophetic word to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts knowing this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation look at verse 21 for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit we find Paul in Galatians we find Paul agitated in Galatians outraged in Galatians we find David in so many of the Psalms we find Moses in the Pentateuch the human authorship of Scripture is not incidental we we do not believe that the human authors of scripture where they are identified for us or are extraneous from our understanding even of the tax but we believe that every single word that became a part of the scripture came from the fact that they were carried along by the Holy Spirit not merely conceptually but verbally the older I grow the more I find in scripture verses that I come to recognize are more important than I thought for instance and testifying to the inspiration of Holy Scripture for instance Matthew chapter 22 you might think this really isn't about the scripture but I'm going to suggest you that it is and not only that it's about the scripture but it is about Jesus himself testifying of the scripture Matthew chapter 22 I begin in verse 41 now the Pharisees were gathered together Jesus asked them a question saying what do you think about the Christ whose son is he they said to him the son of David he said to them how is it then that David in the spirit calls him Lord Jesus is pointing back to the Old Testament and pointing back to David and saying that wasn't merely David speaking that was David by the spirit that was David inspired by the holy spirit that's Jesus saying isn't just David speaking there that is the Holy Spirit of God there it is in a conversation and the confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees and Jesus affirms the inspiration of the scripture David in the spirit our understanding of Scripture and the audacity of the Christian truth claim concerning Scripture gets to the fact that Scripture is not an inference for us it is a revelation Christianity is not an inference the Bible is not the reflection or just take the New Testament is not the reflection of what Christians have inferred about the gospel or about Christ is what has been revealed to us it emphasizes again the nature that Scripture is utterly gift Christianity's a comprehensive truth claim and every single one of those truth claims and the comprehensiveness of that truth claim is found in Scripture and grounded only in Scripture Christianity is not as in so many Eastern religions an effort to empty the mind and to empty the consciousness but rather to fill that consciousness Christianity comes with an imperative concerning the Word of God which is all about filling not about emptying we are for the scriptures with reference to the scriptures to read it to believe it to obey it to teach it to preach it we are to meditate upon it we are to pray it we are to cherish it we are to hear it we are to be encouraged by it we are to be conformed to the image of Christ by it we are to translate it we are to print it we are to publish it we are to share it all this is about filling with revelation not emptying in terms of consciousness the Christian truth claim concerning Revelation is such that we have to understand that when we read the Bible we believe in every case and every verse and every word the one true God the existent self existent God the personal God who intends to communicate we believe that he has by His grace and for his glory by his sovereign power effectively communicated with us and written form such that we can hear such that we do hear his voice in every word of Scripture but unwind that for a moment that means that we do hear his voice and every word of scripture scriptures the oddest book you'll ever read Hebrews chapter four makes clear that it is reading us as we are reading it it is able to separate joints and marrow no other book will the attestation of Scripture someone says why do you believe in scripture there there are reasons we give for why we believe in Scripture fulfilled prophecy very clear as you see in the progressive revelation of Scripture the variety of Revelation and with its unity the fact that it all holds together the early Christian church was was even in trying to think through the nature of Scripture and the Canon of scriptures we know what today was was was led by the Holy Spirit to look for the unity within the scripture there one of the proofs of the of the perfections of Scripture is its honesty if the scripture were written by the disciples they would not continuously turn up so clueless or worse the profits and the Kings would not reveal would not be revealed in their humiliation and as well as in their glory and furthermore if human beings wrote the Bible as a claim to be a word from God afar it would not indict humanity all of us as sinners rebels against God desperately in need of salvation through Christ the recent attempts that we see are attempts to try to reduce the audacity and thus the scandal of Christians believing that the Bible is the Word of God and so these attempts come with trying to say we can do without verbal inspiration we can come up with a more dynamic model of inspiration and these days those who are trying to push this kind of agenda or largely abandoning any kind of redefinition of inspiration all together what you see in some of the most pressing controversial issues of the day are some arguing that what the Christian Church must do is find a way to renegotiate around the text in order to make peace with this great moral revolution taking place around us he's the argument such as the Apostle Paul you see when he was writing about such things in Romans chapter 1 didn't really know what we know now about human sexuality and sexual orientation or the possibility of same-sex relationships in terms of a consensual marriage you can try to find a way around the scripture but the scripture will find its way around you as I say to people in an exasperation I said to someone making this argument the other day I said here's where you're going to lose I said you may win in the culture you may want in the culture every sign is you're gonna win in the culture let me tell you why you're going to lose in the church it's because when the Bible is read it's hurt when the when the text is read it's hurt this is not only a book known by the audacity of our claim about his particularity in a singularity this is the self attesting word this is the word which when heard reveals itself as the Word of God so you could try to find your way around Romans chapter one very clever three hundred pages of clever but when you get up and the text is actually read you're gonna lose and the text is gonna win and we also believe that the text is not alone it is a company by the very holy spirit who interpreted it such as that in life of believers and those in whom God is working in their ears they hear the scripture their ears are open and their eyes are opened you see when the text is read the text is heard that's why I think as how I would answer that historian who said how is it that in one generation people in Germany went from coming to church expecting to see the mass to coming to church demanding to hear the word of God preached I think it's because when they heard it they knew what it was the Word of God and once they had heard it they wanted to hear it again and again and again we live by the Word of God there is no Christianity without the Bible and God's gift of the Bible to us as his word we're a scriptural people not by our choice that we just decide amongst all the other alternatives we're scriptural people we're a scriptural people because we're either a scriptural people or we're no people the audacity of our truth claim concerning Scripture can never be minimized there's no way to somehow tame it down and make get more peaceful it's the Bible is the Word of God all of it the Word of God and the Bible all there is of God's written word that's what Christians believe the question for us of course is always do you really believe what you believe you believe let's pray our Father we're just so thankful that you've given us your word that we would even know how to begin to speak and to know of these things much less to teach and think and to discuss them father we thank you more than anything that your word is redemptive for without it we would still be lost not only in our sins and our trespasses but in utter blindness so our final word is thank you lord thank you for everything thank you for Jesus thank you for telling us of Jesus in the scripture amen you

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Keywords: SBTS, Southern Seminary, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chapel, Apologetics, Albert Mohler, R. Albert Mohler Jr., apologetics series, the bible is god's word, inerrancy, is the bible accurate, is the bible historical, biblical inerrancy, sola scriptura, scripture, is the bible true, is the bible trustworthy, al mohler, mohler, is the bible real, how do we know the bible is true

Id: n6lqZgcGIN0

Length: 40min 46sec (2446 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2017