THE FOUNDATION FOR THE FAITH  "THE BIBLE"     7/64, 1/83

 

I Peter 1:23-25, II Peter 1:12-21,  Isaiah 40:8

 

In I and II Peter, the first chapters end with a vow concerning the infallible Word of God.  In I Peter, speaking of our new faith, the new birth, the apostle uses the word dia with the genitive {by means of}.  In II Peter, our faith in Christ is grounded upon the infallible Scriptures.  II Peter I:12 established in the truth.  Two things are named: (1) eye witnesses II Peter 1:13-18 compare  I John 1:1-3.  (2) the more sure word of prophecy; maybe eyesight deceive, maybe experience is unverifiable, maybe the human story be misrepresented and misunderstood.  But, the sure word of prophecy stands forever.  How do you know it?  Look at I Kings 22:1-38 Zedekiah and the 400 false prophets contrasted to Micaiah and the true Word of God.

 

There are three tests for the true, sure word of the Lord.

 

1. That it comes to pass.

            Deut. 18:21,22  difficulty of that test.  Let me tell you how to make a million dollars in a moment.  Look at the stock market, and if you can speak a word of how an investment will do {if we knew, but a few minutes, the future} make investments in the stock market and make untold millions of dollars.  But no man knows the future, even for a few minutes.  But, God's Word predicts the future hundreds or thousands of years ahead.  Look at Gen. 3:15, 48:8-10, I Sam. 7:13-16, Micah 5:2.  So, Nahum predicts the fall of Nineveh, so Jeremiah predicts the fall of Babylon.  So Jeremiah predicts, after 70 years the return of Israel to their homeland.  And so, Jesus predicts the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. 

 

2. The verification of the true Word of God.  That it be without error.  Ps. 119:160

 

3. That it accomplish its purpose.  Is. 55:10,11  the purpose of the Scripture is to bring us to God and to save our souls. 

            There was a lecturer who avowed that the Bible was a myth, it was a fable, a man stood up in the audience and said, sir, I have a question, I was a drunkard, I was a curse to my family, I was in the gutter.  Then I heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and I was saved.  Now I am a Sunday School teacher and a Christian, a father in the family.  If faith is a fable and a myth, how is it that such a marvelous miracle came to pass in my life?

            So, see for yourself, taste and see and try and prove.  You don't have to prove the Bible by the Bible alone.  There is gold in the rock.  Take a brick out of it yourself and try it and see it's worth.  In every area of human life, it is possible to verify the true Word of God.

            The Holy Bible is incompatibility precious and relevant to us. 

1. All we know of a personal God is revealed to us in the Bible.  We can look at the stars and see God's infinitude.  We can look at a rainbow and see God's love for beauty.  We can watch the storm and see God's omnipotence.  We can look in our heart and souls and see God's moral personality.  But what is His name and who is He personally?  We can know Him, personally, only in the Bible.

 

2. All we know of Jesus we read in the Bible.  Tacitus lived 200 A.D. and Seutonius lived 150 A.D.  And they mentioned the Lord, but that is all.  Josephus lived 100 A.D. and has a passage about Jesus, but the critics say it is spurious. 

 

3. All we know about how to be saved is in the Bible.  Job cried, " Oh, that I knew where I might find Him."  The Philippian jailer asked, "What must I do to be saved?"  The famous missionary in China, Hudson Taylor spoke of a Mongolian who came from afar and asked, "Is there a way to be saved that you know?"  The answer is always found in the Bible. 

 

4. All we know of the future life {the world beyond death} is found in the Bible.  All the philosophers would answer, we don't know. 

Plato cried "Oh, that we had some sure word concerning the life beyond death".  The scientists do not know, all they can do is describe death itself.  The scientist Pascal cried aloud, "The silence of the universe terrifies me."

The necromancers, the occultists, the magicians, the wizards, they cannot know.  Houdini and Blackstone, asked that when they died, their wives would come to a bridge in Chicago and hold out their hands and out of the grave and out of death, they would touch the hand of the one they had left behind.  They tried it again and again, on the bridge, but nothing ever happened.

The secularists and the hedonists therefore say, we don't know anything about life after death, so just get all the pleasure out of life that you can and forget the future.  But, that is difficult to do.  How do you hide your face and close your heart concerning the life beyond the grave?

 

The answer and our hope is found in the Bible.  May I close with these three quotations concerning the infallible Word of God.

 

            "I find my Lord in the Bible, wherever I choose to look.  He is the theme of the Bible, the center and heart of the Book.  He is the Rose of Sharon, He is the Lily fair.  Wherever I open my Bible, the Lord of the Book is there."

 

            "Though its cover is worn and its pages are torn.  And though places bear traces of tears.  Yet, more precious than gold is this Book worn and old that can shatter and scatter our fears."

 

            "There is just one Book for the dying, one Book for the starting tears, and one for the soul that is going home, for the numberless years.  There is just one Book."

 

 

 

                                                            D1/83, D 7/64

                                                                        GF

 

 

 

THE FOUNDATION FOR THE FAITH (THE BIBLE)       I Peter 1:23-25

            Is. 40:8                                                                           7/64, 1/83            

 

            Intro: Harry Rimmer accepted an atheist’s challenge to debate the inspiration of the Bible.  The debate opened with the atheist’s remark, "The Bible itself is not to be used, it is a subject of our investigation, you cannot prove the Bible by the Bible.  Must argue from evidence derived from external sources.  We’ll not refer to the contents of the Bible in seeking to prove its inspiration."  The reply of Rimmer was something like this.  He said, "Suppose on an outside cropping of quartz, was in it a yellow substance.  The man who found it, takes it to an assayer and says, ‘I believe this outcropping is full of gold.’  And the assayer replies, ‘No, you cannot test a thing by the thing itself.  Take a brick out of your wall and assay that and I will know if there is gold in that quartz.’  Again, suppose there is a reason to believe an enemy has put potassium cyanide in your sugar bowl.  You hasten to the chemist and say, ‘I believe there is an attempt to poison me’ and the assayer says, ‘Bring me the sugar bowl and I'll analyze it’ and you reply, ‘No, you cannot prove a thing by the thing itself.  Take a salt shaker from your kitchen and we'll analyze it and see if there is cyanide in the sugar bowl.’  All of this is inane when we are going to see the truth in the Bible, we are going to look at the Bible itself.” 

 

I. All that we know of God and all that we know of true religion is revealed in the Bible.

 

            1. All we know of a personal God, is found here.

                        Stars-infinitude

                        Rainbows, sunsets -beauty

                        Storm- tremendous power

                        A mans moral sensitivity and speaks of his conscience

But, if we know God's name and who He is and what He is like, we must have some kind of a self-disclosure and that disclosure is the Bible.

            2. All we know of Jesus is found in the Bible.  There is a reference to Jesus by the Roman historian, Tacitus and by the Roman historian, Seutonius.  A passage in Josephus about Jesus that the critics say is spurious.  But how do we know about the Lord in truth and in distinct revelation?  There is no other source, but the Bible. 

I remember my professor of New Testament in the seminary, Dr. A. T. Robertson.  When we had finished the course of studying the New Testament, he said, "You have studied Jesus, himself."  The spirit of life and truth and salvation is in the Word of God.

            3. All we know of salvation is revealed to us in the Bible.

            4. All we know of the future life is revealed to us in the Bible.  Men peer into the distance, but they cannot fathom what lies ahead.  If the foundations are destroyed, the faith is destroyed.  Psalm 11:3  If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

The entire structure collapses if the foundation is destroyed.  This explains why the bitter attack is sent forth by unbelievers against the Word of God.

 

II. The one great theme of the Bible produces a marvelous and amazing unity in diversity.  The Bible is preoccupied with one theme...that one theme, that one subject is our Savior.  In the Old Testament, He is depicted as coming.  In the New Testament, He is presented as here.  In the Apocalyptic sections of the epistles written by the apostles, He is coming again. 

            1. All of this is amazing when we realize that the Bible was written by at least forty writers over a period of fifteen hundred years. 

            2. There is all kinds of literature.  There is romance like the story of Ruth.  There is law, like the writings and Law of Moses.  There is history. There is poetry, such as we have in the Psalms.  There are proverbs.  Then there is prophecy and the Bible is distinct in that one tremendous characteristic.  It is full of prophecy.

            3. One of the amazing characteristics of the Bible is the unity of the testaments, even though they were written hundreds of years apart.  What is announced in the Old Testament, is fulfilled in the New Testament.  Look at Heb. 1:1  We cannot divide the two. 

There is a story of a skillfull young driver who is guiding, at a fast pace, his car up a hill on a city street.  He gave it speed to make the incline, as he went up so fast, two cars were coming into a cross street from his right.  He raced for the first car to go between the second car at a terrific speed.  But, on approaching, he saw, what before he had missed, the first car was towing the second car, the two were bound together by steel cable.  There was a tremendous collision and the driver, the young man driving up the hill was tragically hurt.  When he got out of the hospital and paid the bill, he sadly learned that you cannot cut between two things that are bound together.  So, it is, with the two testaments.  Christ is latent in the Old Testament and potent in the New Testament.  Christ is enfolded in the Old Testament and unfolded in the New Testament.  Christ is promised in the Old Testament and presented in the New Testament.

 

III. The astonishing phenomenon of prophecy {the Bible is about 1/3 prophecy}.  In no other religion is there such a thing as a prophet, like the biblical prophets, and there is no such a thing as prophecy, like biblical prophecy.  Only God knows the future and only He could foretell that event coming to pass.  Deut. 29:29,  If anyone of us could foretell the future even for a minute, that one could become marvelously rich, just by knowing what a stock would do in the stock market.

            1. This is a challenge of Jehovah.

Is. 41:22,23,29, 42:8,9, 48:11,21,22, 46:9-11

Jer. 28:9 the record of the contest with Hananiah.

I King 22:25 the contest between Micaiah and Zedekiah.

So Moses writes in Deut. 18:21,22.

            2. The Bible prophesies again and again the future course of cities and of nations.

            a. Is. 23; Ezek.26, 27,28; Zeph. 9:3,4  Described the future destruction of Tyre.  It was reduced to ashes by Alexander the Great.  No other invader had ever succeeded in conquering Tyre.  Even Nebuchadnezzar failed in that effort.

            b. The Bible speaks of the destruction of Nineveh, the prophet Nahum graphically describes in minute detail of the destruction of Nineveh.  In that future time, the Tigris River overflowed and destroyed the walls of the city.  We read of the fall written by Greek historians, who flourished in 50-20 BC.   Diodorus.

            c.  The Bible speaks of the future destruction of Babylon.  Is. 13 names the Medes as the nation used to destroy the city.  The like prophecy is found in Jer. 5.

 

            3. The prophecies in the Bible also concern our times. 

            a. Dan. 2:31-44 

            b. The Bible speaks(almost endlessly) of the future of Israel.

Gen. 17:1-17;15:13 predicting the 400 years of bondage.

Is. 39 predicting the Babylonian captivity.

Jer. 29:10 the prophecy of the 70 years of Babylonian captivity after which the people could return home. 

Ezek. 22:17-22 the worldwide dispersion of the people and the regathering in unbelief.  Ezek 36:24,25.

Jer. 23:6 and following.  The future glory of the people of the Lord.

Amos 9:11-15

Luke 21:20-following.  Prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem.

Matt. 24:34 The promise of the continuation of the Jewish people.

            c. Prophecies concerning us.

There will be movements toward one governmental confederation.

     "       "     "        "                   "    one ecclesiastical union.

The prophecies of the coming apostasy that so tragically characterize our people.

            4. The marvelous prophecies of the coming of our Savior, the Lord Jesus.  It prophecies a Savior, but adds 333 specific details.

Gen. 3:15 born of a woman (the seed of the woman) Is.7:14

Gen. 48:8-10 He's born of Judah

Jer. 23:5,6  He's born of the house of David

II Sam. 7:12-16

Is. 9:6 Speaks of His Deity

Is.  40:3 Speaks of the fore-runner

Is. 53 Speaks of His death, so does Zech. 12:10

Ps. 22 and other passages (32 in number) predictions in the Psalms that are fulfilled on Calvary.  At a time when Israel knew no other way of execution but stoning, the prophecy was that He is to be crucified.  So, standing by the Cross, we read Is. 53, you would think that the prophet was there beholding the very death of our Lord.  Was it for crimes that I have done, He groaned upon the tree, amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree.  This is the Bible, the foundation of the faith.