TPC Connections

Sermon Notes

HOW WE GOT THE BOOK!
Part 1
“The Revelation and Inspiration of Scripture”

I want to do a little refresher on how we got our Bible. So let’s look at a simple graph that lays out the sequence of events on how God did it:

Revelation – God communicating to man what He wants us to know (Hebrews 1:1)
Inspiration – God superintending human writers to compose and record His revelation to mankind (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21)
Transmission – The ancient process of accurately copying Hebrew and Greek scriptures for successive generations
Canonicity – God guiding the early church to recognize what books are inspired
Textual Criticism -The modern process of comparing existing Hebrew and Greek manuscripts to determine what is original
Translation – The process of translating the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into a modern language
Interpretation – The process of a reader studying to understand what God’s Word means (2 Timothy 2:15)
Illumination – The process of the Holy Spirit helping the reader understand and apply the Bible (John 16:13)
Application – The process of putting into practice what the reader has learned (James 1:22)

This time we’re going to look at the first two—Revelation and Inspiration. I want to open up with two foundational Bible verses regarding the Word of God:

2 Tim. 3:16-17 NIV “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Verse sixteen reveals where the Word of God, the Bible, came from, it’s true origin. It says the Bible came straight from God! And verse 17 gives the purpose for which God gave it.
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The Bible consists of 66 books written by around 40 authors from many different places and backgrounds over a period of 1,500 years. Yet the miracle is that it comprises a beautiful, non-contradictory whole with one central message—God’s plan of salvation through Messiah, Jesus Christ!

Now notice Paul said “all scripture” is God breathed. When Paul wrote those words, most of the NT wasn’t yet written. So he was pointing primarily to the OT at this time. And like Paul, Jesus attested that the OT is straight from God.

Luke 24:44 “He (Jesus) said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’

Jesus used the OT to correct false doctrine, indicating OT scripture is an important source of doctrinal authority.

He defeated Satan in the wilderness by quoting OT scripture.

He prayed, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17). The only word that existed when He prayed this was the OT.

Jesus confirmed the Genesis creation account, part of the OT, when talking about marriage between a man and a woman.

He said in Luke and Matthew, “From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.” (Luke 11:51; see also Matthew 23:35)

In these passages Jesus referred to the OT as factual and infallible by mentioning all the martyrs, from Genesis (the first book and first martyr) to Zechariah, the last martyr.

Notice what he tells the Sadducees about Scripture:

“But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” (Matthew 22:31-32)

Jesus tells the Sadducees (and by default, warned all of us) that they had slipped into error by not reading what God said to them out of the OT!

He referred to the Great Flood as historical fact:

“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. ” (Matthew 24:37-39; see also Luke 17:26-27)

Jesus regarded the Genesis flood as total truth!

And Sodom and Gomorrah as well:

“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:28-29)

So according to Jesus, the OT Scriptures are the very God-breathed words Paul speaks of in our key verse!
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Now, we must also remember what Jesus said regarding the yet to be written New Testament. He promised:

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you (the 12 Apostles) into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future”—John 16:13 NLT

So here Jesus states that His apostles (the 12) would receive revelation truth. Revelation truth is truth formerly unknown and also unknowable to the mind of man if God did not choose to reveal it.

The Apostle Paul spoke of this kind of revelation truth several times. For example, he writes about the mystery of the church:

“For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles— if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs,”—Eph. 3:1-6
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Jesus also predicted that the 12 disciples would be shown future events. This was abundantly fulfilled through Paul, Peter, John, and Jude, who wrote down volumes of prophetic scriptures, like those found in the Book of Revelation.
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Then Jesus also promised something very crucial to the twelve about the future of NT scriptures:

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”—John 14:26

Here Jesus guarantees that all the teachings He brought to the twelve would be supernaturally brought back to their memory by the Holy Spirit so that they could faithfully write them down for us.

This is how we got the gospels!

The gospels tell us of the conception, birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They are historical accounts of what truly happened.

They also give to us a treasure trove of what Jesus taught about virtually every conceivable subject pertaining to life and living.

But they are more than historical accounts like other history books. The author’s—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were guided by the Holy Spirit as Jesus promised!

Peter writes, “For no prophecy recorded in Scripture was ever thought up by the prophet himself. It was the Holy Spirit within these godly men who gave them true messages from God.”—2 Pet 1:20-21

Remember, Paul said “all scripture is God-breathed” which includes the writings on Law, History, Wisdom, Poetry, the Gospels, Epistles, Prophecy, and Apocalyptic literature like Revelation.
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So our big take-away is—Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would give to the 12 Apostles divine revelation and future prophecy.

And that He (the Spirit) would also bring to their memory the things Jesus had taught them. He did, and they wrote them down in what we know as our New Testament.
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Now, we note in our key verse that Paul used the words “God-breathed” in describing the origin or source of God’s word.

Other versions use the single word “inspiration” to describe it.

The Greek word is theopneustos.

The prefix ‘theo’ is from ‘theos’, the word for God.

The suffix ‘pneustos’ is from the Greek word pneo (nay’-o) which means “to breathe out,” or to “blow like the wind.”
Again, 2 Pet. 1:21 says, “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

The Greek word for ‘moved’ means “borne along, moved, influenced” by the Holy Ghost. The idea is that they were “carried along” by an influence from above.

They were moved only as the influence of the Holy Ghost was upon them. They were not self-moved. Rather, they were like a sailboat that is borne along by the wind. When the wind stops blowing, the boat stops moving. It’s the same with the Bible writers.

So our take-away message is that the sacred Scriptures are of divine origin. Each part of speech, including every inflected word-form, right down to the punctuation used in the Bible is God-breathed, written under divine inspiration.

For instance, Jesus said: “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”—Matt 5:18 NKJV

A “jot” was an iota, the 9th letter of the Greek alphabet. It represents a very small quantity (we still use the expression “not one iota of truth”).

A “tittle” was a tiny accent mark—a small dot, stroke, or mark, especially when part of a letter. We get the word “scintilla” from it. For instance we might say, “There was not one scintilla of proof that he committed the murder.”

So Jesus makes a huge statement here about the inerrancy (error free) nature of Scripture, and of its divine origin.

The God that created the universe doesn’t make grammatical mistakes of any kind, right down to the tiniest punctuation marks in a sentence, every word, jot, and tittle are inspired—breathed out by God!

LET’S PRAY