Alistair Begg: Not One Jot or Tittle

I invite you to turn with me to the two passages of Scripture just brief passages that are part of the basis for my assigned subject this evening it's something of an irony to me that given the task of speaking about the absolute sufficiency of the Bible that I should have left my hotel bedroom and left my Bible in the bedroom and so I had to beseech one of my colleagues here to let me borrow their Bible which is of course not very alarming in America because so few people carry Bibles it wouldn't have really mattered so I'm sure that's not true here but we're going to read just from Matthew and chapter 5 the words of Jesus truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away not a jot or a tittle or an iota nor a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished and then in the words of Paul when he writes to Timothy in chapter 3 as for you Timothy continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent equipped for every good work or just a brief prayer a spirit of God descend upon our hearts Windom from Earth through all their pulses move speak to our weakness mightiest our Lord and make us love thee as we ought to love for Jesus sake man on the 2nd of June 1953 I can't say I remember it well in the context of the coronation of Elizabeth the second Her Majesty was presented with a Bible and in the presentation these words our gracious Queen to keep your majesty ever mindful of the law and gospel of God as the rule for the whole life and government of Christian princes we present you with this book the most valuable thing this world affords here is wisdom this is the royal law these are the lively Oracles of God and with those words she ascended the throne some 2000 years preceding that not in an abbey but on a mountainside Jesus the King declared for truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away not a jaunt or a tittle will pass from the law until all is accomplished now in taking such a vice subject in a relatively short time I want to pose three straightforward questions first of all what did Jesus believe about the Bible secondly what did the Apostles believe about the Bible and thirdly what do you and I believe about the Bible so first of all then Jesus in those words there on that mountainside he provides us with a very straightforward and clear statement of his own view of Scripture he says that the Old Testament is absolutely trustworthy even down to the smallest detail now it is one thing for someone to make a declaration like that and then it is another for us to be able to walk with that person and see that kind of conviction worn out in everyday life and while it would be tedious to weave our way through all of the Gospels at least we could stop for a moment in a number of places and see just what Jesus believed about the Bible when he is tempted in the wilderness by the evil one he refutes the temptations of the devil by using the Scriptures man will not live by bread alone he says but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God he knew that the words of the proverb was absolutely true every word of God proves true and so when he is confronted his immediate resource is to the Word of God itself if we were to go with him back to his childhood home and sit there in that amazing encounter that took place in the synagogue in Nazareth we would have found ourselves like the rest of the congregation on the very edge of our seats when after he had read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah he sat down in the position of the teacher and looked records for us in chapter 4 that all the eyes of the people in the synagogue were fastened on him it's a wonderful picture isn't it there wasn't there wasn't a wandering gaze what is going to come down from his lips and what is Jesus do well he says to them dramatically today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing in other words all of the Old Testament promises of what God was going to do now resided in him and then as the New Testament unfolded with the fulfillment of all that God has done the focus remained on him in the upper room by way of explanation when the question is unfolding about where he is going next and what will happen to him and why these things are happening to Jesus doesn't conjure something up as it were again the Gospel writers remind us Jesus says to the group the son of man goes as it is written of him in other words the Lord Jesus himself used his Bible to decipher the Providence's of God in his own life the Lord Jesus used his Bible in order to grant him assurance in the face of all that was yet before him no surprise then that he had spoken so clearly on the mountainside and what about on the roadside when after the resurrection we have that amazing encounter with those two characters clear paths and the person who is known as the other disciple what a shame you get in the Bible and you don't even get your name and some of us are gonna have a terrific time just going through in a new heaven and a new are saying I'm looking for somebody I'm looking for the other disciple there's anyone know who who that is somebody says it's his wife and I don't know who it is if we were supposed to know we would have been told it's there perhaps to remind us that most of us don't have our names you see most of us are the other disciples most impact in life's lived may be viewed in unvisited graves unvisited tombstones well actually that's George Eliot in middle Barnes isn't it I just stole that I shouldn't have mentioned a big most of you didn't recognize it but anyway there he was there he was see a good Scottish education does wonders for you but under on the roadside what does he do whatever what's the conversation he says to the mother has been a huge hollow Balu in Jerusalem really yes well it's all been about Jesus of Nazareth he past tense was a prophet and we past-tense had hoped that he was actually going to be the one for whom we had been looking when we were reading our Bibles in anticipation of the appearing of the one who had come and we've heard rumors about somehow or another he's around but there's been no sign of him at all and surely it is of great significance that Jesus does not just go like Shazam it's me what does he do he turns to the Bible and he provides them with probably the finest Bible study that we don't actually have the tags for in all of the New Testament and when the penny dropped for these characters they didn't say you know I wish we had a phone because we could have taken a selfie with them you know or they didn't they didn't they didn't want to immediately be be preoccupied even with the encounter itself no they rejoiced in the exposition of the scriptures and when in a relatively short order of time he is now present again with his disciples what does he say to them he says these are my words and everything written about me in this book and then he goes on and looks as and he opened their minds in order that they might understand the scriptures what was Jesus doing and while he was preparing them preparing them because they were going to take the gospel to the world he received the words that he spoke from the father he gave those words to the apostles and their words in turn became the content of the New Testament Jesus endorsed the authority of the Old Testament and then he in turn made provision for the New Testament by authorizing his apostles in the task to which they were called in an actual fact in writing the New Testament the Apostles were actually making it possible for them to do what Jesus had asked them to do in writing the New Testament they were making it possible for them in and through the Scriptures to go to the end of the earth and to continue to the end of the age how could they possibly go to the end of the earth how could he continue to the end of the age how is that happening through the Scriptures the confidence of heaven resides in the scriptures and surely no follower of Jesus could possibly have a less view of Scripture than Jesus himself what did Jesus believe well this is what he believed what did the Apostles believe well what is it that Peter says in his second letter their men spake from God carried along by the Holy Spirit and come back to that or in the verses that we read here from second Timothy in chapter 3 all Scripture is breathed out by God now as we came in here today we passed a number of galleries and museums filled with all kinds of splendid things that are for most of us utterly inspiring in other words for us to view them or read them or enjoy them is to be aware of the effect that it has upon us so we refer to it that it has been inspiring but when the Bible uses this verb in this way it's not to speak about the impact that the scriptures have on ours but it is to remind us that the source of the Scriptures is in God alone now when Paul gives us this and we know this is probably the classic passage on the doctrine of scriptures inspiration and so on I don't think that we should imagine that Timothy when he read this letter said oh wow there's there's a novel thought all Scripture is inspired by God as if Paul was telling something that he didn't know Timothy knew the scriptures he'd known them from infancy he had been brought up in the Old Testament he was familiar with the fact that this is God's Word this is how God has spoken and now Timothy is about to take on the responsibility that falls to him as a result of the departure of Paul the time in which he is engaged is not the easiest of times in fact it's frankly difficult and it is made all the more daunting by the fact of Paul's departure because we need one another don't we and those of us who have those to whom we look which I trust is all of us tonight like the thought of them not being there even if they're not immediately at arm's length that access for a call or a query a concern and for that to be severed in time is a significant issue and when we read the Bible and we read of these individuals we ought not to forget the humanity of it all that Paul loved Timothy Timothy owed his spiritual life to Paul they were affectionate and engaged with one another in the cause of the gospel and now he says the time has come to methey for my analysis I'm about to hang up my boots I'm playing my last game here I am on my way you know the environment in which your ministry you know Timothy how absolutely essential it is that you do not drop the ball in this instance and let me remind you all the Scripture is breathed out by God so in other words the very foundation of that to which he calls him is grounded in the scriptures themselves so that although he will no longer have access to Paul he can be assured that the scripture is utterly reliable that it is divinely inspired that it is entirely sufficient for the fulfilling of his ministry now why was that so crucial and why is it so crucial well I've alluded to it already if Timothy were to lose confidence in the truth in the power in the relevance of Scripture then there would be nothing for him to pass to faithful men to Germany Jew who would then in turn be enabled to teach others also if he were to lose confidence in this then there would be nobody who would be complete and equipped because the equipping and the completion and the fulfillment of these things is grounded in the Scriptures themselves now although it took time for the New Testament to finally be recognized and finalised somewhere around the end of the fourth century we need to realize too that you don't have to fete it around in your Bible to realize that even early on the picture of the authoritative elements of the New Testament are quickly becoming apparent even in first Timothy for example when Paul is writing there and he quotes a saying of Jesus as the same time as East quoting from the Old Testament and he refers to them both as scriptures Peter in the same way refers to the letters of Paul and referring to them as Scripture and in all of this the point of it as we see in the text is that the message of the Bible in the Old Testament and in the New Testament is salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and Ritter boss puts it quite wonderfully in just a sentence when he says God did not inspire the Bible to give us a whole but in order to bring us into fellowship with him in order to give us Christ to give us Christ you know it's distantly possible to be very excited about the Bible and Miss Jesus in the process did you ever see SSM chorus book any of you when you grow up you remember used to sing that at the Bible class make the book lift to me or Lord show me yourself within your word show me myself and show me my Savior and made the book live to me in other words illuminate the printed page there's not asking for inspiration this is asking for illumination and the chorus at least if I understand it correctly and so we need to realize this and remind ourselves of it and the wonder of it of course and the mystery of it is often a preoccupation understanding that in doing this God didn't dictate the Bible as it where or type it out or put it on a laptop and somehow using individuals as if they were put into neutral in the process they didn't know what was going on well you you understand this I need to spend a long time on it the Bible is not an object into which God breathed something it is something which God Himself breathed out and so that picture of being swept along and moved by the Holy Spirit is simply what we understand as concurrence or the dual authorship of Scripture that in the process of giving to us the Bible whether it is in the Book of Amos or whether it is the Gospel of Luke or whatever it may be God is 100% involved in breathing out and the writer the human author is 100% involved in writing it down that is why as has been pointed out for us while it is the one gospel the distinctive elements have to do with it think of personalities and when you read Ezekiel it does read just a wee bit different from Isaiah as well they were all individuals says Calvin the Scriptures obtained full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven as if they're the living words of God were heard they take the way we come to the average Church do you actually believe that the Bible is the tiller that guards and guides the church I'm not at my third question yet this is just a little parenthesis I've allowed myself the primary reason we come together is not for us to say things to God but it's to listen to what God has said to us in the Bible what we have to say to God in praise is of importance we're arts to it but it's not as important that's what God has said to us in the Bible because it is God's Word that's why it's a wonderful thing when you go into a church building and somebody stands up and says let us hear the Word of God so that we might be like the Thessalonians and Paul writes them it says I love you folks when you receive the Word of God which you heard from us you accepted it not as the word of men but that's what it really is the Word of God a divine product produced through the instrumentality of humanity God spoke without violating the personality of the authors and the man wrote without distorting the divine message that they convey it now what Paul is doing in speaking to Timothy here in his apostolic framework is making sure that when Timothy exercises his ministry he's going to be absolutely convinced of this and it is on account of that that he's already issued a clear call to him to continue in what he has learned to continue in what he has firmly believed it's a wonderful thing isn't it the importance of ministry to and among children I was talking with a friend some time ago and in the course of our conversation it struck me just forcibly the huge impact that the reading of the Bible had had upon my friend before ever anybody explained the gospel to him and some of you are on on the same timeframe as myself we've got less in front of us than we have behind us are already now saying in our prayers at night with the psalmist Oh God from my youth you have taught me and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds so even to old age and gray hairs Oh God do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation your power to all those to come surely this is the grandparents prayer some 71 17 and 18 ie when I went to America at 31 they used to invite me to speak at youth conferences now I speak at grandparents summits I'm supposed to be excited about it I'm only marginally excited about I'm more alarmed than I am excited but you see the imperative nature of what is happening is Donald Guthrie who taught me an lbc New Testament I think he's the one who said from a human perspective the church at this point from Paul to Timothy trembled humanly speaking on the brink of annihilation there was no guarantee that it was going to make the transition from the Apostolic to the post apostolic church that's the importance of the Scriptures that's the importance of what Paul is saying be aware Timothy of its authority of its reliability of its finality same for us we no longer have prophets we don't have the Lord Jesus physically present with us as he was with his disciples we do not have new organs of Revelation as in the time of the Apostles as John Murray puts it scripture is the only revelation of the mind and will of God available to us it is the only extent revelatory Word of God and it is of course that confidence and sufficiency in its confidence that was to mark out Timothy and it is clear from all that followed that he held the line I looked one forward one day to reflect him with Timothy and what it is to have a godly mother and a godly grandmother to be able to perhaps sing with him you know when all thy mercies oh my god my rising soul surveys transported with the view I'm lost in wonder love and praise on numbered comforts to my soul your tender care bestowed before my infant heart conceived from whom those comforts float that's Timothy song Paul leads him to Christ his grandmother and his mother laid a foundation suturing him guarding and guiding him waking him up in the morning with the Shema hear o Israel the Lord your God the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and so on and Timothy would have begun his day with light at least with his mom and he would have ended his day with that and then there came a day when the pieces of the jigsaw fell into line what a day well you say but that was Ephesus it's a long time ago this is London oh yes it is and here we are and the real question for us now it's not actually what did Jesus believe and what did the Apostles believe but what do you and I believe I've alluded to this and I lost this quote earlier and I found it again mercifully and I want to give it to you just as a as an intro to my by closing meanderings here John Murray writes wonderfully helpfully when he reminds the reader it is possible to be formally committed to the fact that the Word of God is living and authoritative without being ourselves arrested by it summoned into its presence and bowing in reverence before the one to whom it points now with that said I want to make some comments that I'm glad I'm leaving directly after I've made them what do you and I believe you say well I say I have an orthodox view of the Bible and and if someone says to you in the bus on your way home well why on what basis do you believe in the infallible nature of Scripture are you going to save your gonna give them a course in apologetics as helpful as that may be no the only ground for that belief is in the witness of Scripture itself to itself there can be no higher authority and that's the wonderful thing about the Bible when you teach it because it's not like any other book any other book for there is a textbook or a novel or whatever it might be we sit down whether we get a cup of tea or we said I'm gonna see if I can understand this book now when we come to the Bible of course we do not come to the Bible initially with views about infallibility or inerrancy and I think at all where we're reading this book we're reading it and trying to pay attention to it but somewhere along the line it suddenly becomes apparent to as this book understands me it's not so much that I'm trying to understand it it understands me what kind of book is this and on what basis do I believe in its authority and could I ever believe yes as I say and Jesus himself believed now it is in what kind of context that we face the question what do I believe well I don't want to be alarmist and unkind in any way but we face this question in I would suggest to you a collapsing culture that's easy to say some of you are familiar with the writings of Douglas Murray he's just on a new book the madness of crowds gender race and identity and in his introduction to the book he writes as follows we are going through a great crowd derangement in public and in private apparently he's just been out here walking around both online and off people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational feverish haired light and simply unpleasant he's making a comment on contemporary culture it is time we began to confront the true causes of what is going wrong what are you talking about well he says we've been living through a period of more than a quarter of a century in which all our grand narratives have collapsed in the vacuum we are then left to come up with explanations and meanings of our own so that crowds on the Metropolitan line on an average rush hour commute are squeezed in tight with one another never talking trying to see other people in the reflection and if they're honest saying to themselves who am i what am i how many days can I keep doing this and does anybody will somebody come forward and say that there is meaning and purpose to all of this you read the times the proper times I'm not talking about the New York Times we're talking the Times of London if you read it on September 10th I read it every day you were overhead Melanie Philips comment in which she announced and pointed out that the BBC film which is planned to be shown in schools to pupils between the ages of 9 and 12 claims that there are more than 100 gender identities that's the film - which Melanie Phillips a practicing Jew says in her opening sentence how did we get to a stage where such absurd nonsense is promulgated by our cultural avatars how did we get to a stage where such absurd nonsense now immediately sons and say well you're not allowed to say anything is absurd nonsense it may be absurd nonsense to her but it's not absurd and off we go on that sliding scale why does she do that she cuz she's really the Old Testament she understands the nature of God and his creation or do you want another indication of it remember the old days when there used to be the story of an impending judgment and there was sin and then there was a story of redemption and and so on and then the church decided that there was a better way to go at that and nobody came to listen well just just read your newspaper it's all back it's all back we have a new we have a new a Virgin Mary we've got great earthen Berg traveling the world on behalf of the Church of climatology now irrespective of your view of whether you're like plastic straws or not the fact of the matter is that this fascinatingly is increasingly the world's version of a secular religion it transcends gender it transcends race it transcends cultures it transcends political convictions it is absolutely throughout the whole Western world and it is a theology says my man this climate theology in much of Europe and in sections of America has replaced traditional Christianity as the ultimate source of authority ovens over human behavior comprising both an all-embracing teleology of our existence and a prescriptive moral code I find it quite fascinating because sometimes I speak to my friends they say you know there is a point event a man once to die and after that comes judgment they said never heard anything as ridiculous in all my life then we just walk around for a minute and a half and they said you know what I would say within three decades the world's gonna burn up and be done I'd say I never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life so there we are at polar opposites on what basis do you have this and where is this well is this the mouth of God is this the word of God that's what I'm saying to you it's one thing to say I believe in the Bible yes is a great idea it's another thing to say I believe in the Bible when it intersects radically against the cultural milieu in which I live because then I have to do something with it it would be great if the collapsing culture was more than matched by a church that was ready to go instead of a church that is confused in the 1950s James s Stewart just happened to be a Presbyterian Scotsman addressing students and faculty at Yale at the Divinity School he warned them about embracing a view of scripture that was theologically vague and harmfully accommodating theologically vague and harmfully accommodating is it really wrong is it unkind for me to suggest that the warning has gone unheeded in many quarters of the church that we are prepared for whatever reason to revise the cutting edge of Scripture when it says that marriage is a heterosexual monogamous lifelong Union or are we really confused is that because the Bible isn't clear think about it in our day you're sensible people research history consider the contrast between my own background in Scotland and the Church of Scotland and all that has gone on in the last 10 15 20 years in Scotland consider the response by and large that we've seen in our own time in contrast to the response of the evangelicals in the middle of the 19th century in the secession from the Church of Scotland 18th of May 1843 described as a sorrowful yet glorious day when in the context of all this unraveling staff 451 ministers stood up in the assembly and walked out commentating on that one of my friends wrote principal had triumphed over expediency scripture over human laws and the whole of Scotland was confronted with the example of men who were prepared to suffer for Christ and to suffer for his word it was about the Bible the Bible can't allow us to do this here's what's fascinating and alarming incipient denials of Scripture like when it's not really obvious in the culture are not really obvious in the church those little denials may take decades to become apparent but they will eventually yield the bitter fruit of unrighteousness and the issues tonight in Western culture relating to gender and to human sexuality and to personal identity are matters concerning which the authority of the scripture must be brought to bear collapse in culture confuse church gets a little worse before we finish cowardly and compromised clerics Paul's charge to Timothy and all the Timothy's to follow was clear keep your head in Deraa hardship do the work of an evangelist discharge all the duties of your ministry and fundamental to that for Timothy was a clear conviction in his own heart and life concerning the Evangel the gospel that he was then to proclaim which Evangel is it that is going to be preached when Gresham machen came to Britain many years ago he tackled this very subject and in his own unmistakable way he said a man who is on fire with a message never tax in that wretched feeble way but proclaims the truth joyously and fearlessly in the presence of every high thing that has lifted up against the gospel of Christ well I say to you tonight the challenge remains the opportunity is before us perhaps as never before the pulpits of our nations require men convinced that the Word of God does the work of God by the Spirit of God research history in the city of Cleveland in the city of London actually from Cleveland as well there's never been a strong pulpit in Cleveland in all that I've been able to research but here in London there has it was here in London that Spurgeon preached did you go to the van Gogh exhibition did you realize that van Gaal went to church and listen to Spurgeon preach amazing thought and what of Thomas Watson in the 17th century or John Stewart just down the road or Lloyd Jones over here or dig Lucas since in Helens and it goes on and on that's somebody saying to themselves oh yeah yet bring out the old boys the worthies they're all gone well listen here it doesn't matter if they're gone we didn't look to the past we don't rest in the heritage they leave they are not the light they were sent to bear witness to the light you as the true light was coming into the world JC RAL wonderfully in volume 7 page 269 says to his readers fear not for the Church of Christ when ministers die and saints are taken away Christ can never maintain his own cause he will raise up better servants and brighter stars the stars are all in his right hand leave off all anxious thought about the future cease to be cast down by the measures of statesmen or the plots of wolves in sheep's clothing Christ will ever provide for his own church it's a wonderful reminder isn't it and so it now falls to us to serve the next generation by expounding and proclaiming and applying living and loving the Bible itself is no small task is it to declare the Bible's assessment of humanity a sinful guilty responsible and lost you're gonna do that it's going to come at cost while a final word will be to Peter but before that one other Scotsman okay this is Hugh Martin alas he says that so many who ought to be teachers deal as falsely and irreverently with the Oracles of God as a cat playing with her kittens or a kitten with a cork I am sorely afraid that there is to be a great decline in our church a great lack of holy courage in contending for the infallible truth of the entire scriptures and truly man that can tolerate the substitution of the natural for the supernatural of human reason for divine revelation are not only no longer were they their sustenance which was an important word at that point but are no longer worth their salt may God raise up men taught from a bath and valiant for every jot and tittle of divine truth for it shall stand heaven and earth pass away and if you meet any after I'm gone hoodoo courageously stand for all revealed truth give them my compliments and tell them to be strong and of a good courage for now even at this present time their heads shall be lifted up above their foes let him yield not to the current sentimental Christianity that would convert men's faith in a living glorious inexhaustible infallible word in two empty-headed empty hearted speculations no better than Chinese puzzles or acted charades who God will avenge such trifling the scripture cannot be broken it is the testimony of him who is himself the Eternal Word and Peter says all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass the grass withers and the flower falls but the word of the Lord remains forever and this is the word that by the gospel was preached to you just a moment of silence and then someone else will come and tell us what we're supposed to do next you

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Keywords: ligonier ministries, ligonier conference, london conference, the light of the world, reformed theology, reformation theology, alistair begg, is the bible reliable?, is the bible authoritative?, is scripture reliable?, is scripture authoritative?, biblical authority, scriptural authority, 2 Timothy 3 16, biblical inerrancy, inerrancy of scripture, jot or tittle, what is inerrancy, ligonier conference 2019, inerrant, final authority, begg, alistair, ligonier, english reformation

Id: bFXRIhlm6TI

Length: 43min 28sec (2608 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019