The Bible is …

I. Unique In Its Unity

A. Although this book was composed my men, its unity reveals the hand of the Almighty.

1. The was written over about a period of about 1500 years. The Bible was written by more than forty authors from every walk of life, including kings, military leaders, peasants, fishermen, tax collectors, poets, musicians, and shepherds.

2. These authors wrote in many different places:

a. Moses in the wilderness, Jeremiah in a dungeon, Daniel on a hillside and in a palace,

b. Paul inside prison walls, Luke while traveling, John while in exile on the isle of Patmos.

B. The Bible was written on three different continents: Asia Africa Europe and written in three languages:

1. Hebrew the language of the Israelites and practically all of the Old Testament.

2. Aramaic, the "common language" of the Near East until the time of Alexander the Great (sixth century B.C. through the fourth century B.C.).

3. Greek, the language comprising almost all of the New Testament. It was also the international language spoken at the time of Christ, as English is becoming in the modern world. It is significant that the apostle Paul wrote his letter to Christians in Rome in the Greek language rather than in Latin. The Greek New Testament vocabulary is abundant and sufficient to convey just the shade of meaning the author desires. For example, the New Testament used two different words for "love" (for two kinds of love), two words for "another" (another of the same, or another of a different kind), and several words for various kinds of knowledge. (Dockery, FBI, 224‑25, 227)

C. The Bible addresses hundreds of controversial subjects, subjects that create opposing opinions when mentioned or discussed.

1. The biblical writers treated hundreds of hot topics (e.g., marriage, divorce and remarriage, homosexuality, adultery, obedience to authority, truth‑telling and lying, character development, parenting, the nature and revelation of God). Yet from Genesis through Revelation these writers addressed them with an amazing degree of harmony.

2. In spite of its diversity, the Bible presents a single unfolding story: God's redemption of human beings: "The 'Paradise Lost' of Genesis becomes the 'Paradise Regained' of Revelation. Whereas the gate to the tree of fife is closed in Genesis, it is opened forevermore in Revelation. "(Geisler/Nix, GIB'86, 28)

3. The unifying thread is salvation from sin and condemnation, to a life of complete transformation and unending bliss in the presence of the one, merciful, holy God.

D. Finally, and most important, among all the people described in the Bible, the leading character throughout is the one, true, living God made known through Jesus Christ.

1. The Old Testament gives "the preparation" for Christ (Isaiah 40:3)

2. The Gospels ... record the historical manifestation of Christ (John 1:29),

3. Acts relate the propagation of Christ (Acts 1:8),

4. The Epistles give the explanation of Him (Col 1:27),

5. And Revelation is found the consummation of all things in Christ (Revelation 1:7)." (Geisler/Nix, GIB'86, 29)

6. From cover to cover, the Bible is Jesus Christ.

E. Although the Bible contains many books by many authors, it shows in its continuity that it is also one book.

1. Pick any one historical book that contains many different authors and what do you get? A huge diversity of opinion.

Let’s try an experiment: Let me pick just 5 different people in this room (pick them out and have them stand), who share the same religious beliefs, the same language, the same Christian values, the same nationality and asked these 5 people to write on these 5 controversial topics, Write your opinion on the role of Christians in the government; … on when life begins; … on the origin of the universe; … on your view of homosexuality; … on your view of divorce and remarriage…. how many of you feel that they would all totally agree? Yet from Genesis through Revelation these writers addressed them with an amazing degree of harmony.

2. The uniqueness of the Bible as shown above does not prove that it is inspired. It does, however, challenge any person sincere seeking truth to consider seriously its unique quality in terms of its continuity.

3. The Bible is Unique in it’s unity

II. Unique in It’s Permanence

Psalm 119:89, Your word, O LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.

Isaiah 40:8, The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”

A. The Bible is the permanent and inspired Word of God …What is inspiration?

(no we are not talking about that special someone who inspires us – though Patti is a real inspiration to me!!)

1. Biblical inspiration is God's oversight of the human authors so that, using their own individual personalities (and even their writing styles), they composed and recorded without error His revelation to man in the words of the original manuscripts.

2. Inspiration means that the Holy Spirit of God guided the human writers in the writing of Scripture so that what they wrote was precisely what God wanted written.

3. When you break the doctrine of inspiration down to its essential elements, there are seven key factors:

a. #1 – The Bible comes from God and was caused by God;

b. #2 – God used humans to write his Words;

c. #3 – The Bible was written verbally (in words);

d. #4 – Inspiration means all of Scripture is inspired, not just parts of it;

e. #5 – The “Autographs” (the original documents penned by the biblical authors) are inspired. (Copies of the original documents are VIRTUALLY inspired to the extent that they accurately reflect the original documents--and the evidence indicates that they DO accurately reflect the original documents to a very high degree.)

f. #6 – Because Scripture is inspired, it is inerrant; and

g. #7 – Because Scripture is inspired and inerrant, it alone has final authority.

4. The word inspiration literally means "God-breathed" in the Greek. And because Scripture is breathed out by God, it is true and inerrant.

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

5. To be inspired means that the Bible is the very words of God!

B. One question that many people ask concerning the NT is this, hasn’t the NT been changed since it has been copied and recopied throughout history? [we don’t have any autographs]

1. This is an important and key issue to address, since an altered text would do grave damage to the credibility of the story.

2. Fortunately, the problem is not a lack of evidence. There are three different types of evidence that are to be used in evaluating the NT text. These are the Greek manuscripts, the various versions in which the NT is translated, and the writings of the church fathers.

a. Since the NT was written at a time prior to the invention of the printing press, all books were copied by hand. There are approximately 5,500 copies in existence that contain all or part of the NT. Although we do not possess the originals of any of the NT writings, copies exist from a very early date. The NT was written from about A.D 50 – A.D 90. The earliest fragment dates about A.D 120, and the two major manuscripts, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, both complete copies, date from A. D. 325-350. This may see like a long time span, but it is minimal compared to most ancient works. The earliest copy of Caesar’s The Gallic Wars dates 1000 years after is was written, much longer than the NT.

b. Not only do the NT documents have more manuscript evidence and close time interval between the writing and earliest copy, but the entire text of the NT could be reproduced within 250 years of its writing through the writings of the early Christians. In commentaries, letters, etc. John Burgon has catalogued more than 86,000 citations of the NT in the writings of the early church fathers who lived before A.D. 325.

c. We notice that there is so much more evidence for the reliability of the NT text than any other comparable writings in the ancient world.[1]

C. What about the reliability of the OT? – Let’s talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls

1. If someone had asked a minister in 1947 to prove that the original Hebrew Scriptures from the Old Testament were reliably copied without error throughout the last two thousand years, he might have has some difficulty in providing an answer. Why? Because the oldest Old Testament manuscript was dated approximately A.D. 1100. Obviously, that old manuscript from A.D. 1100. How could we be sure that the text in the A.D. 1100 copy of the Scriptures was identical with the original text as given to the writers by God and inspired by Him?

2. However, an extraordinary discovery occurred in 1947. A Bedouin Arab found a cave in Qumran near the Dead Sea which ultimately yielded over a thousand priceless manuscripts dating back before A.D. 68, when the Roman legions destroyed the Qumran village during the Jewish war against Rome.

3. An Arab shepherd boy discovered the greatest archeological find in history in 1947. When the ancient Hebrew scrolls from these caves were examined by scholars they found that this Qumran site contained a library with hundreds of precious tests of both biblical and secular manuscripts that dated back before the destruction of the Second Temple and the death of Jesus Christ. The most incredible discovery was the immense library of biblical manuscripts in Cave Four at Qumran that contained every single book of the Old Testament with the exception of the Book of Esther. Multiple copies of several biblical texts such as Genesis, Deuteronomy and Isaiah were found in Cave Four. Scholars were able to reach back a further two thousand years in time to examine biblical texts that had lain undisturbed in the desert caves during all of the intervening centuries. The scholars discovered that the manuscript copies of the most authoritative Hebrew text were virtually identical to these ancient Dead Sea Scrolls. After carefully comparing the manuscripts they discovered that, aside from a tiny number of spelling variations, not a single word was altered from the original scrolls in the caves from the much copied A.D. 1100 manuscripts. How could the Bible have been copied so accurately and faithfully over the many centuries without human error entering into the text? The answer is found in the overwhelming respect and fear of God that motivated Jewish and Christian scholars whose job was to faithfully copy the text of the Bible.

D. The Bible is permanent in its writing.

1. When you open your bible and read those words, you can be assured that they are the words of God.

2. There have been many who for thousands of years have attempted to prove otherwise, but they have failed miserably!

The famous French writer Voltaire, a skeptic, often wrote expressing his contempt for the Bible and Christianity. He had an intense hatred of the Word of God because it reminded him that he would someday stand before the Great white Throne to be judged by Almighty God. Voltaire wrote a prediction about the future of the Bible more than two centuries ago from his library in Paris: “I will go through the forest of the Scriptures and girdle all the trees, so that in one hundred years Christianity will be but a vanishing memory.”

Ironically, despite Voltaire’s confident prediction about the imminent death of Christianity, his library, in which he wrote his false prediction, was acquired years later by the British and Foreign Bible Society. His library was soon filled from floor to ceiling with thousands of copies of the Bible he hated, but could not destroy (David John Donnan, Treasury of the Christian World, New York: Harper Brother, 1953[2]

3. The Bible is unique and an essential part of our lives … don’t leave home without it!

III. Unique In It’s Impact

This lady surprised a burglar in her kitchen. He was all loaded down with the things he was going to steal. She had no weapon and was all alone. The only thing that she could think to do was quote scripture. So, she holds up a hand and says, "ACTS 2:38!" The burglar quakes in fear and then freezes to the point that she is able to get to the phone and call 911 for the cops. When the cops arrive, the burglar is still frozen in place. They are very much surprised that a woman alone with no weapon could do this. One of them asked the lady, "How did you do this?" The woman replied, "I quoted scripture." The cop turned to the burglar, "What was it about the scripture that had such an effect on you?" The burglar replied, "Scripture! What scripture? I thought she said she had an axe and two 38's."

The bible has a powerful impact upon the lives of those who use it!

A. The Changed Lives of the Apostles prove the validity of the Bible!

1. The Church historian Schumacher researched the lives of the apostles and of their martyrdoms.

a. Matthew suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia, killed by a sword wound.

b. Mark died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horse until he was dead.

c. Luke was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous preaching to the lost.

d. John faced martyrdom when he was boiled in a huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered from death. John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patmos.

e. Peter was crucified upside down on an X-shaped cross, according to church tradition because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.

f. James the Just, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, was thrown over a hundred feet from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat James to death with a club.

g. James the Greater, a son of Zebedee, was ultimately beheaded at Jerusalem.

h. Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael, was a missionary to Asia. Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia when he was flayed to death by a whip.

i. Andrew was crucified on an x -shaped cross in Patras, Greece. After being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony. He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he died.

j. The apostle Thomas was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips.

k. Jude, the brother Jesus, was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.

l. Matthias, the apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot, was stoned and then beheaded.

m. The apostle Paul was tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero at Rome in A.D. 67.

2. The question begs to be asked … would these men have given their lives in this way for a lie?

B. Non-Biblical changed lives: (examples like)

1. Sir William Ramsey is regarded as one of the greatest archaeologists ever to have lived. He was a student in the German historical school of the mid-19^th century. He believed that the book of Acts wasn’t written between A.D. 50 – A.D. 75, but rather it was written 100-200 years later. He believed that the book of Acts was not trustworthy in describing first century conditions. He set out to prove the truth of his theory, only to be forced to do a complete reversal of his beliefs due to the overwhelming evidence uncovered in his research. He said, “I found … the Book of Acts as an authority of the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor.”[3]

2. Sir Walter Scott, the brilliant author of more than sixty popular books, was finally approaching his moment of death. As he lay on his deathbed, Scott asked his son-in-law, Lockhart, to bring him “the book” from his huge library. When Lockhart naturally asked, “Which book, Sir Walter?’ Scott answered, “There is only one book,” pointing to the Holy bible. In this final deathbed conversation, Sir Walter Scott, one of the greatest writers of his day, correctly assessed the supreme value of the Holy Scriptures far above the other great books in his large library, including his own classics.[4]

3. The great men who founded the United States of America, including George Washington, were strongly influence by their faith in the Word of God.

a. President Washington once declared, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

b. The great, writer Charles Dickens, stated that Bible is the Word of God. The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.”

c. Another great writer, Lord Francis Bacon, was the finest scientist in the sixteenth century and contributed much to the scientific study of nature. Bacon wrote a pivotal book, The Advancement of Learning, in which he called for a study to be made of Bible prophecy to systematically show how God had precisely fulfilled the predictions made over thousands of years. Filled with wonder at the creation of the world, Francis Bacon wrote: “Thy creatures, O Lord, have been my books, but the Holy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields and gardens; but I have found thee, O God, in thy sanctuary, thy temples.” Although Bacon acknowledged the awesome evidence about God revealed by science and nature, he discovered that the most profound knowledge of God was found in his detailed study of the inspired Word of God.

4. The question is this, can you find any other writing that has so impacted and inspired people throughout history as has this Book called the Bible?

CONCLUSION

1. Which leaves us to this point … what are you doing with the inspired and infallible word of God?

a. Are you struggling to understand your future … turn to the Bible, Psalm 119:105, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

b. Are you struggling with discouragement … turn to the Bible, Psalm 9:9-10, 9 The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. 10 Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.

c. Are you struggling with temptation … turn to the Bible, 1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

d. Are you looking for hope for your life … turn to the Bible, Psalm 146:5-10, 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, 6 the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— the LORD, who remains faithful forever. 7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, 8 the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous. 9 The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. 10 The LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD.

e. The bible is the rock upon which to build your life, 2 Samuel 22:31-33, 31 “As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him. 32 For who is God besides the LORD? And who is the Rock except our God? 33 It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.

2. Will you trust in the Word of God and follow His leading or will you go your own way?

Stephen Covey captured a great truth on authority. While on maneuvers, a battleship lookout noted a light in the dark, foggy night. After noting the light's coordinates, the captain recognized his ship was on a collision course with that other vessel. "Signal the ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees." The return signal came, "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees." The captain said, "Send, I'm a captain, change course 20 degrees." "I'm a seaman second class," came the reply. "You had better change course 20 degrees." By this time the captain was furious. He yelled, "Send, I'm a battleship. Change course 20 degrees." The reply..."I'm a lighthouse."

3. God's authority is never changing, it's always constant.

a. The sad truth is this, most of us look at the Bible as a good book … a good read … and we will go to hell for such a lax view.

b. The Bible is not a good read, it is the WORD of GOD!

c. When we read the bible, there are no options presented for us to consider, there is simply truth upon which to act.

d. Whenever a change of course is required we better be prepared to make the correction from our end.

4. The Bible speaks of the love and grace of God for which I am thankful.

a. But that same word states, Hebrews 10:31, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!”

b. That same word says, Matthew 7:13, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.

c. The word of God and our relationship to it is not a thing to be trifled with or played around with.

d. It is time to get serious about our relationship to God and his word!

Extra:

6. Some important Bible facts:

a. Most people assume WWJD is for "What would Jesus do?" But the initials really stand for, "What would Jesus drive?"

b. One theory is that Jesus would tool around in an old Plymouth because the Bible says, "God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in a Fury."

c. But in Psalm 83, the Almighty clearly owns a Pontiac and a Geo. The passage urges the Lord to "pursue your enemies with your Tempest and terrify them with your Storm."

d. Perhaps God favors Dodge pickup trucks, because Moses' followers are warned not to go up a mountain "until the Ram's horn sounds a long blast."

e. Some scholars insist that Jesus drove a Honda but didn't like to talk about it. As proof, they cite a verse in St. John's gospel where Christ tells the crowd, "For I did not speak of my own Accord..."

f. Meanwhile, Moses rode an old British motorcycle, as evidenced by a Bible passage declaring that "the roar of Moses' Triumph is heard in the hills."

g. Joshua drove a Triumph sports car with a hole in its muffler: "Joshua's Triumph was heard throughout the land."

And, following the Master's lead, the Apostles car pooled in a Honda....."The Apostles were in one Accord."

[1] McDowell, Josh, Answers To Tough Questions, pp. 21-23

[2] Jeffrey, Grant, The Signature of God, pg31

[4] Jeffrey, Grant, The Signature of God, pg 17-18

Message preached by Doug Vernon on November 4, 2001, at Southside Christian Church