The Bible is the most powerful book in existence. It can tear you to pieces. It has the power to do that, Hebrews 4:12,
"For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
as far as the division of soul and spirit, both joints and marrow, and it able to discern
the thoughts and intents of the heart." It cuts to the core; it can tear you apart. It can also put you back together again. First Peter 1:23, "We are begotten again by
the Word of truth." It can make you holy. Jesus said, "Sanctify them," praying to the
Father, "by Thy truth. Thy Word is truth." The Word of God can give you the greatest
joy. "These things are written," says the apostle
John, "that your joy may be full." This is a powerful, powerful book. It tears you up; it puts you back together;
it makes you holy; it gives you joy. It stands alone. It is the only book that heaven has ever delivered. All other claims to being heavenly books are
fabrications and falsehoods authored by men and demons. The Bible is powerful because it is not the
word of men, it is the Word of God. When the apostle Paul was writing to the Thessalonians,
he commended them in chapter 2, verse 13, he said, "For this reason we also constantly
thank God that when you receive the Word of God, which you've heard from us, you accepted
it, not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs
its work in you who believe." It does that work; it convicts; it restores;
it sanctifies; it produces joy. It does it because it is not the word of men. It is not a collection of 66 books written
by men who are sharing with us their religious instincts, experiences, intuitions. It is the Word of God. And I want you to see that as we begin tonight,
so turn to Hebrews, chapter 1. Three passages that lay this out will be a
good foundation, Hebrews, chapter 1. This is a summation of revelation. God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers
and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us
in His Son whom He appointed heir of all things through whom also He made the world. This sums up what the Bible is: God spoke;
God spoke. God spoke by the prophets, those other writers
of Scripture. They wrote down what God said. They wrote it down in many portions and in
many ways - in many polumerós; books, sections - and in many ways, polutropōs . The Word of God came to them in direct verbiage. The Word of God came to them in visions. The record of the Word of God includes prophecies,
visions, parables, symbols, theophanies, audible voices. There are many portions to the Scripture. He's referring here to the Old Testament;
and there are many forms that revelation came in. All of this is recorded in the Old Testament
by men who were instruments of God to write it down; men enlightened, and energized, and
inspired by God Himself. Look again at 2 Peter, chapter 1. In 2 Peter, chapter 1, we have a very familiar
and important statement, verse 20: "Know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture
is of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will. But men move by the Holy Spirit spoke from
God." Now the first thing to identify for you, and
it's a very important thing to identify for you, is what is meant by prophecy. If you ask that about verse 21, you might
not have an answer: "No prophecy," it's not defined. If you back up to verse 20, "No prophecy of
Scripture." The word "prophecy" may mean predicting the
future, but it doesn't have to mean that and it doesn't mean that. It means "no speech" or "no revelation." No revelation of Scripture. No revelation of Scripture, that's the idea
here. "Is a matter of one's own interpretation,"
verse 20, "no revelation was ever made by an act of human will." Now what do we mean by one's interpretation
in verse 20? Epilusis literally means "releasing," literally
means "releasing." The generative case usage indicates "source." In other words, Scripture was never released
from a human source. Scripture doesn't come from you. Divine revelation doesn't come from you; it
doesn't come from me. The origin of Scripture is never personal
and private. And then he repeats similar ideas in verse
21: "No prophecy, no word from God was ever made by an act of human will; never born along,
carried along, produced, brought forth from humans." This is to say that Scripture and all that
Scripture contains is divine. It doesn't have as its source any personal
private releasing. It is not made by an act of human will. Contrary to that, every prophecy of Scripture
comes because men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. The verb is pherō , it means "to be carried
along." Like a ship when the sails are raised and
the Holy Spirit filled those men like the wind fills the sails of a great ship and carries
them along in the direction He desires. They spoke for God; they spoke for God. They spoke from God. One other Scripture that is foundational is
in 2 Timothy, chapter 3; and there's a lot more that could be said about these, but I'm
only using this as an introduction for a few minutes. In 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture," pasa graphē
. "All Scripture is God-breathed, is God-breathed, and profitable for teaching for reproof, for
correction, for training and righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped
for every good work." Famous Greek phrase: Pasa grafē theopneustos
; all writing God-breathed. Scripture is the very breath of God. It doesn't have as its source the human will;
it doesn't come out of anybody's private personal interpretation or releasing; it isn't born
in the heart of anyone or the mind of anyone; it all comes from God. All Scripture is God-breathed. It comes from Him. No person gives revelation. Divine revelation comes only from God. The church didn't invent the Scriptures anymore
than Isaac Newton invented the law of gravity. He discovered it, and God's people throughout
all of history by the Holy Spirit's leading discovered the 66 books of the Bible and identified
them. So God is the author of what Scripture says. "God spoke," Hebrews 1, "God spoke." The source is not any person, not the will
of man; but men spoke from God and for God, and everything that they wrote down as Scripture
is God-breathed. You have to have that view of Scripture, that's
what the Bible is. The Bible is not some high level of human
achievement. It's not like Shakespeare or some great poet,
or some collection of esoteric, religious, elevated, gurus or geniuses. It is the very breath of God. As such, it stands alone. There is no other - listen - there is no other
inspired book, no other; no other book. God gave us His entire revelation, 66 books
contained in this one book. Any faithful, diligent study of this book
will yield internal evidence that that claim is absolutely true. You have sat here long enough under enough
preaching and teaching, you have been exposed to verse by verse by verse by verse, examination
of the Word of God, and you have seen the test; and the longer you've been there listening,
the more confidence you have in the Word of God. It stands every test. So here's my question. Since the Word of God is all this, since the
Bible is all this, why is the Bible so intolerable in an age of tolerance? Since it has no parallel; it has no equal. Why is it so despised? Simple answer: hostility toward Scripture
resides in the heart of all sinners. Hostility toward Scripture resides in the
heart of all sinners. Not some sinners, all sinners; all of them. Now the degree may vary, but the hostility
is there. I was fascinated to see on the news that the
pope said it's okay to spank your children, and now he's being blasted across the globe
for making such an outrageous statement. And one of the people condemning the pope
for that statement said, "Jesus would never do that." I would like to find all those people, line
them up and say, "The Bible not only suggests spanking, it commands it." They hate that. That's the least of the things they hate about
the Bible. Hostility toward God's Word resides in the
heart of every sinner. Jesus summed it up in that familiar eighth
chapter of John when he says, "Why do you not understand what I'm saying? It's because you cannot hear My Word. You're of your father, the Devil, and you
want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, doesn't
stand in the truth because there's no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his
own nature, for he's a liar and the father of Lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not
believe Me. He who is of God hears the words of God; for
this reason, you do not hear them, you're not of God." That is Jesus saying hostility toward His
Word resides in the heart of every sinner. It's not just that they can't understand it
- that true, 1 Corinthians 2:14 - it's that they resent it. There always will be, always has been a fundamental,
irreconcilable, incompatibility between the revealed truth of God in Scripture and the
world; always, always. Jesus - and I've been quoting this recently
- summed it up by saying this: "The world hates Me because I testified to it that its
deeds are evil," that there's too much sin and too much judgment in the Bible for the
sinner to embrace it. Why? "Because men love," John 3:19, "darkness rather
than," what? "Light, because their deeds are evil." Still, understanding the truth of Scripture,
understanding its antipathy to everything in the world, understand that sinners are
hostile toward it; that's natural, that's the default position of every sinner. Through the history of the church there have
always been people who are convinced that we can overcome this antipathy, we can overcome
this hostility if we just kind of tweak the Bible a little bit and let some things go,
don't talk about them, release them, don't make an issue out of them, soften the deal
down a little bit, and cater it to their tastes. But I would remind you, the only time, the
only time, the church ever makes any spiritual impact on the world is when the people of
God are faithful to the full message: uncompromising, boldly proclaiming the truth right into the
face of the sinner's hostility. Faddish ministry is just compromise. We are dealing with the Word of God. Every word is true. Now let me construct a paradigm for you, okay,
I'm going to take you to class, like seminary class, okay. I'm going to give you six words to think about,
and this is how to think about the exclusivity of Scripture. First of all, we'll use the word "objectivity,"
objectivity. We start with the reality that the source
of truth is objective. What does that mean? "It's outside of me." It's outside of me. Luther called it the "external word," the
external word. Luther said, "It's fixed; it's set; God gave
it. You can believe it or you can not believe
it. You can't tamper with it, it's outside of
you." The truth does not come from man, we saw that
in the verses we read. You may discover it, you may be exposed to
it, you may learn it, you may understand it; you cannot change it, you cannot alter it,
you cannot play with it. I remember being on a talk show one night
debating with the mayor of San Francisco on CNN and we were talking about homosexuality,
and he was advocating homosexuality and I was saying to him, "That's unacceptable. That's unacceptable to me as a Christian." He said, "Well, I'm a very devout Catholic." I said, "Well, great. So if you're a very devout Catholic, you must
believe the Bible." "Uh, uh, uh," he started meandering off into
I don't know where. He couldn't say, "Yeah, I believe the Bible,
or he was done. And he wouldn't say, "No, I don't believe
the Bible, but he didn't. You can either accept it or reject it; you
can't tamper with it. You either take all of it or none of it, not
part of it. Authentic Christianity understands that Scripture
and the Bible is objective, absolute, external, divine truth. No person has ever had in himself any idea
or any experience that determine divine truth, it comes from God. No human being has ever been a source for
divine truth. No human being has ever been the one who established
divine truth. "Not an angel," Galatians 1. In fact, if anybody, even an angel, comes
along with another gospel, he's cursed. What someone thinks is true doesn't make it
true. There is no individual truth. You don't have your truth and somebody else
has his truth. That's hard to sell in a post-modern world
that doesn't believe in absolute truth. What you think is true is not necessarily
true. What is true is true; and Scripture is true. It is not only true, it is perspicuous, it
is clear, clearly true. The meaning is evident on the face of it. It's not puzzles hidden; it's not mysteries;
it's not conundrums; it's not hopeless allegories. Yeah, there are some things hard to understand,
but the main message of Scripture is clear and unambiguous. It is not existential; it doesn't rise from
you. The Bible isn't inspired because it hits you
in certain ways that make you feel something. Let me tell you something: the Bible is true
if you never lived; the Bible is true if you never failed anything; the Bible is true if
you never read it. It is true on the face; it is true in and
of itself. Authentic Christianity has always held that
the Scripture is absolute, objective truth. It is as true for one person as it is for
another regardless of anyone's opinion about it. It has one true meaning that applies to everyone. Every passage has one true interpretation. Every passage has one true interpretation
that applies to everyone in every age. The meaning is determined by God; it is not
determined by you, or me, or anyone else. It isn't determined by you because you feel
this is what it might mean. It isn't determined by me because I'm some
kind of a scholar. The meaning is determined by God. It's like any other truth; it's like any other
reality. It is reality; it is truth. What is true is true. In no way is any truth in Scripture decided
by your experience. Whether it affects you or doesn't affect you
subjectively has nothing to do with its truthfulness. Now this deals a very heavy blow to vast numbers
of people in professing Christianity who look at the Bible like some kind of a verbal Ouija
board and run their fingers in their minds through it waiting for some kind of esoteric
impulse. And you hear people get together in a Bible
study and say, "What does this mean to you?" Who cares. Who are you? What does this mean to God? What did He say and what did He mean by what
He said? Biblical truth is objective; it is true in
and of itself. Psalm 119:160 says this: "The entirety of
Your Word is truth." Now, friends, the very starting point and
necessary foundation for a truly Christian world view is right there. The Bible is all true, absolutely true. It is God-breathed. Every word has come from God. It is objective truth in and of itself. It is external to you, and your experience,
and your mystical feelings. If you give that up, you have wondered into
non-Christian paganism. You give up the ground of biblical truth that
is objective, and whatever belief system you have left isn't worthy to be called Christian,
even if it has some vestiges of Christian symbolism. You see this all the time. You listen to people talking about the fact
that they're Christians and they advocate Christianity. Sometimes they say they're Roman Catholics. But they're for homosexual marriage. You have just eliminated the foundation of
Christianity. That's not Christianity. You have literally taken the Bible, set it
aside, and made yourself God. You can't pick and choose. True Christianity begins with objective truth
revealed by God. That's the first word, "objectivity." Second word, "rationality," rationality. What does that mean? That the objective revelation of God breathed
into the Scripture can be understood by normal reasoning. It can be understood by normal reasoning. Scripture is logical, non-contradictory, clear,
subject to mental assessment. Listen, there are no errors; there are no
discrepancies; there are no contradictions; there are no lies; there are not unsound principles. I'll go step further; anything that contradicts
the Scripture is untrue. There are no fantasies; there are no absurdities;
there are no avatars; there are no inconsistencies; there are no weird things; there are no myths;
there are no allegories. It is absolutely true, and it is reasonability
true and understood by reason in a normal process of using the mind. In Nehemiah, chapter 8, Nehemiah opened the
Word of God and he gave the sense of it. Remember that? He gave the sense of it. He interpreted it, as it Ezra, Ezra 7:10. Scripture is understood, listen to this, by
the exact same process of reason that you use to solve a math problem. Surely you don't believe that somehow during
the week, maybe hopefully by Wednesday or something, some angel shows up in my study
and deposits in my mind some esoteric interpretation of a passage. Look, if you come here Sunday after Sunday,
you follow the flow of my reason, do you not? The context informs the reason. The flow of the argument, every passage of
Scripture is making a case, presenting truth, and it is reasonable truth. There are no secret meanings. That's been a deceptive part of Christianity
going way, way back, even into pre-Christian times when rabbis got caught up in all kinds
of mystical things, and it came out as what you've heard called "Kabballah" which is nothing
but a bunch of nonsense. If you're an engineer, or you're a mechanic,
or you're an architect, use your reason to do your work and come to the right conclusion. That's essentially what a student of the Bible
does. I use my mind. I don't sit and wait for some special delivery
from heaven. The meaning of the Scripture is the Scripture,
and the meaning is there, clear to be understood by the normal process of reason. "As we approach the 21st century, says one
writer, "it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that our entire culture is in
trouble. We're staring down the barrel of a loaded
gun and we can no longer afford to act like it's loaded with blanks." One of the bullets in this gun is the bullet
of fantasy which is just dominating our culture, just dominating it. By the way, that's a sign of nihilism. That's a sign of abandoning everything. That's the bottom rung of the ladder that
leads to decadence. You've gone from living in a world of reality
to living in a world of fantasy. This is a ploy of Satan to disconnect people
from reality. Here we step into that world; we can't condescend
to that. We have to speak of things that are real,
and reasonable, and rational to people who are looking for fantasy. There is in the world a massive move toward
anti-intellectualism; anti-intellectualism. Cotton Mather, the American Puritan said,
"Ignorance is the mother, not of devotion, but of heresy." Ignorance is the mother of heresy. We're speaking rational truth; we're rejecting
fantasy. Let me tell you something: fantasy doesn't
help your children, whether it's Twilight or Harry Potter , it's loaded, first of all,
with homosexual innuendos. It's packed full of the cult of death. Why, that's so far different from our message
of resurrection and life. Mystical movements, charismatic movements,
relying on emotion, intuition, personal interpretations, feelings, experiences antithesis to the cultivation
of the mind. There are more and more pastors starting churches
who've never been to seminary. "Why would you go to seminary? Jesus will show you what it means in your
intuition." Scary; scary. What do I mean by rationality? I mean that the Bible is to be understood
in normal ways. It is regular language, real people, actual
history; and you learn to interpret it that way, just as if you were reading a book on
the Civil War, or if you're reading a book on the Revolutionary War, or if you're reading
a book on Ancient Rome. There are no secret meanings; there are no
allegories; there are no transcendental insights; there is no divine voice coming down. You hear people all time: "Listen to the voice
of God. Listen for the voice of God." The only place you'll ever hear that is in
the Bible. Let me invert what I've been saying and say
it negatively: any kind of irrational approach to Scripture is not only dangerous, it's a
denial of Scripture's truth. You can't get to the truth of Scripture irrationally,
you can only get to error. So the first word is "objectivity." The second is "rationality." The third word is "veracity." What happens when a sanctified rational mind
looks at the objective word "veracity"? That's an "-ity" word for "truth." Objective revelation of Scripture interpreted
rationally yields divine truth in perfectly sufficient measure to accomplish God's intension
for His revelation. How does God expect us to understand His Word
and therefore to respond to His Word, do what He wants, apply His Word? Simply this: to recognize it is His Word,
it is outside of us, it is to be apprehended rationally - and I'll say it again - irrational
approach to the objective revelation of Scripture yields divine truth in perfectly sufficient
measure to accomplish God's intention for His revelation. You'll come up with the truth. It's all true and it's all necessary for life
and godliness. It's the truth by which all other truth claims
are measured. It's the truth which exposes all error. And you only have the truth if you have the
meaning right, and that takes a refined mind and a trained mind. The Bible is not about inducing feelings or
emotions, it's about divine truth. By the way, if you wonder how far we've slipped,
go into most of the contemporary churches and watch the light show and the music suck
you into some kind of emotional bath. That doesn't lead to cognitive, rational,
deep thinking about Scripture. That's where the truth comes from. We are then committed to the truth. We have to be committed to the truth. So when we get into dialog with the sinners
of the world, whether they're our friends, or our family or, classmates, or the guys
we work with, ladies we work with, or whether or not we're in the media or wherever we are,
we don't have dialog. We don't have dialog. Why? Because there's really nothing to dialog about. I'm always happy to show up and say, "I'm
glad I'm here because I'm telling you the truth. I'm just telling you the truth." Contemporary evangelicals like the idea of
dialog because, again, remember now, if you're going to make the Bible an issue, hostility
toward the Bible is natural to sinners. So modern evangelicals prefer dialog. They don't want to clash with every-other
idea, every-other world view. We want dialog. So what do we do to get dialog? We minimize biblical authority; we minimize
biblical clarity; we minimize judgment. I mean we do that all the time anyway. I was reading a book this week in which the
author says, "I wonder when we tell the story of Noah and the ark with the kids," he said,
"why we always have this beautiful little boat and all these cute animals going in two-by-two,
and then Noah and his family look like little Precious Moments statues standing on the ramp?" And then he asked this: "Where are the ten
million dead bodies floating? Why isn't that a part of the story?" Because that is the story. You can't make this biblical truth cute. We have to make it clear, it has to be the
truth, and that's not for the discussion. And, again, that takes us to 2 Corinthians
10 where our job is to use spiritual supernatural weapons to smash the walls of people's ideologies. That's spiritual warfare; smashing down false
ideologies with the power of the truth. All right. So we start with objectivity, and we approach
it with rationality, and we end up with the truth. Now you know what that leads us to? The fourth word, "authority." You know, this would be true in just about
any area of life. If you're in a hospital and you're working
as a medical doctor and somebody presents in a hospital with some kind of issues that
- symptoms that you're trying to figure out, and you have a lot of people gathered in the
room; whoever knows the most about those symptoms is the authority. It doesn't matter who ranks over who. Whoever's got the most pertinent and accurate
information is the authority. The crisis calls for that. I mean that's true in military battle. You can have all kinds of ranks in the military;
but whoever knows the most about the enemy, the most about the weapons, the most about
the strategy, he's the authority. Everybody says, "Okay, okay, okay." Guess what? We are the authority in the world because
we know the truth. That means we speak the truth with authority. That is fundamental to what it is to be a
Christian. Do we make enemies? We already have enemies. God has enemies; Christ has enemies; the Bible
has enemies. Jesus told His disciples, "If they persecuted
Me, they're going to persecute you. If they hated me, they're going to hate you." But if you know the truth, then you can only
speak with authority; you can only speak with author. But it's not really stylist to speak with
authority like that; not really popular, not in this particular age. People like soft words, words that don't trouble
the mind, don't trouble the heart and leave room for everybody's opinion. They see this as some kind of tenderness,
some kind of acceptance, some kind of tolerance. But it's really the opposite. One writer put it this way: "The one who really
wanted a tender heart would be calling for a jackhammer." Hard words, hard teaching, hard truth is the
jackhammer of God and it takes a great deal to break up hard hearts. And the God of all mercy is willing to do
it, but He always does it according to His Word, and His Word is not easy on us. Jeremiah 23: "Is not My Word like a fire?"
said the Lord, "and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces." When people call for smooth words, easy words,
the result is hard people. When we submit to hard words, we become the
tenderhearted of God. Well, I hate to tell you folks, but we can
say it with love, but we're the jackhammers in the world, to break up the hard-hearted,
buried under lies. Well, just for the sake of time, let me give
you a fifth word. The word is "incompatibility," incompatibility. The noose is now tightening in our paradigm,
right? We started with objectivity and then we went
to rationality. We understood that that yields veracity, truth,
divine truth. That gives us literally delegated authority
from God to speak. And now the noose tightens right around the
neck to the point where you begin to feel the rope burn. Here is comes: truth is absolutely incompatible
with error. To put it in the language of 1 John 2:21,
"No lie is of the truth." What a great statement: "No lie is of the
truth." Truth is in the end - listen - absolutely
and finally intolerant. It doesn't mean you have to be mean or unloving,
just the opposite. But the truth itself is intolerant. It is intolerant. 1 Corinthians 16:22, "If you love not the
Lord Jesus Christ, you're condemned." Listen, tolerance toward people is good, biblical. Tolerance toward error is bad; that's a sin. God hates lies, doesn't He? The Old Testament says God hates lies. He hates lying tongues and he hates the liars
who waggle them. Isaiah 8:20, "To the law, to the testimony
Scripture: if they do not speak according to this word, it is because no light is in
them." It's incompatible with error. So here we are in the world. They, by nature, like we were once, hate the
Word of God. And we have the truth, and we have to proclaim
it with authority and let them know it is incompatible with all error. And that leaves me to a final point: "integrity,"
integrity. What do I mean by that? The truth is to be preached and lived. The truth is to be preached and lived. To live otherwise is hypocrisy, right? If I say, "I have the Word of God, I understand
the Word of God," it carries the truth of God with authority, it is incompatible with
error; then I am mandated to both proclaim it and live it. I don't want to be like those people in Titus
1:16 who profess to know God, but in works deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, disqualified
for every good work. I want to be like Ezra, and I refer to this
verse, Ezra 7:10, wonderful testimony to Ezra: "For Ezra set his heart to study the law of
the Lord and to practice it, and to teach his statues and ordinances in Israel." That's it: study the Word of God; practice
the Word of God; teach the Word of God. That's integrity; that's integrity. Anything less is hypocrisy. That's why Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy
4:16, "Pay close attention to two things, yourself and your doctrine," yourself and
your doctrine: what you preach and how you live. Well, I hope that encourages you to maybe
think about Scripture in a fresh way. A lot of what I have said to you tonight I
put in a little book that I wrote many years ago now called Why One Way? It's just a short little book, but it would
sort of cement these things that we've talked about tonight. You might find some in the bookstore, from
Grace to You, or somewhere else. Why One Way? , just a little book. But I think it'd be useful to kind of strengthen
what we've said tonight. Father, we thank You for Scripture. What an incredible gift. What an incredible, immeasurable, incomprehensible
treasure it is. May we be faithful to maintain that integrity
that Your Word and You deserve. May we live it. May we be doers of the Word as well as proclaimers
of its truth. And so may You use us to draw many to Yourself. We know it is by this Word for which the heart
of every sinner has such hostility and antipathy. But it is by this Word and by this Word alone,
and the gospel in this Word that You save sinners. There's no other way. The gospel in Your Word is the power of God
unto salvation to everyone who believes. How will they hear if we don't preach? So, Lord, help us to know that while the default
position of sinners is to be hostile toward Your Word, that You have many people waiting
to hear who will buy that proclamation of Your truth, believe, and be saved. Use us in that way we pray Christ's name. Amen.
