When God speaks, He speaks with words and the Bible is the representation in writing of the words that came from God...the words that God spoke. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. We all know the amazing transformation a caterpillar undergoes, cocooning itself and then becoming a beautiful butterfly. But imagine that same process, only this time the caterpillar is dead. If it still becomes a graceful butterfly, that's more than a transformation, that's a miracle. Well, that's exactly what it is, a miracle when a person hears God's word and becomes a Christian.
A spiritual corpse becomes forever alive. I invite you to consider the power source behind that miracle, as John MacArthur takes a foundational look at the inspiration of scripture in his study called Making a Case for the Bible. Before the lesson, though, we received a letter from a young lady who, along with her missionary family, has grown from John MacArthur's Bible teaching. It's a brief but encouraging story, so let me read what Anna told us.
She writes, My name is Anna, I am 18 years old and a missionary kid living in India. I just wanted to thank you so much for your ministry and for how you have blessed me and my family through your broadcasts, sermon recordings, study Bible, and books. She says, My mom started listening to your sermon tapes when she was a teenager, and she has passed that habit on to me now. I listen to your sermon recordings every day and have grown significantly in my spiritual maturity through them. Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into delivering your sermons and radio broadcasts. I have benefited greatly from your study Bible as well. May the Lord bless you as you continue to serve Him. Thank you again so much for the tremendous blessing you continue to be in my life. Sincerely, Anna Well, thank you for that wonderful testimony, Anna. And friend, when you support Grace To You, you help connect people like Anna and her family with biblical truth that helps equip them to serve the Lord and His church, even on the mission field. If you would like to support our work, I'll tell you how to contact us before we close today. But right now, let's get to the lesson.
Here again is John MacArthur. We come now to a wonderful opportunity to consider the great doctrine of the inspiration of the Scripture. We're going to look at the theology category that is called Bibliology, the study of the Word of God. It was some years ago that I read an interesting interview. A very popular Christian songwriter, many of whose songs we all sing and enjoy, was asked to explain how he was able to write a certain song.
And this was the answer. Regarding that song, it came quickly and we do not care to discuss the theology of it. In fact, we feel that to dissect the song would be tampering with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit who inspired the song, end quote. Well, I think I understand what the writers of that song meant, but that really is a startling claim to say that they don't want to discuss the theology of the song nor dissect the words of the song because that would be tampering with the Holy Spirit who inspired the song, may indicate that they don't quite understand what it means when something is inspired.
In defense of them, we use that word a lot. We especially use it with regard to music. It's one thing to say I was inspired by the music. It's something else to say that was an inspiring rendition of the music. We mean we were lifted up and encouraged and our emotions were elevated in the experience of singing that song, or hearing that song. A writer could even say it was an inspiring experience for me to write that song, but to say that a song is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and therefore should not be dissected or tampered with is to make the song equal to Scripture. Are we to say then that a songwriter who writes a song is inspired in the same way that Luke was inspired when he wrote the gospel of Luke, or Paul was inspired when he wrote the book of Romans, or Isaiah was inspired when he wrote the prophecy that is called Isaiah? What do we mean when we say the Bible is inspired? Do we mean it's an inspiring book because it inspires in us faith and religious feeling and understanding? And are people today still inspired when they write songs in the same way that writers of the Bible were inspired? Are books today inspired?
How about sermons? Are they inspired? The term inspire comes from the Latin, to breathe in...to breathe in.
And it's a bit misleading, actually. In 2 Timothy 3.16 it says, all Scripture is inspired by God. Really I think we've created a problem here because of that English word inspire. The actual Greek term is God-breathed, theopneustos from which we get pneumatic, pneumonia, those kinds of things related to breath. But the actual word translated inspired in 2 Timothy 3.16, all Scripture is inspired by God, given by inspiration of God is...all Scripture is God-breathed. It is not us in breathing, it is God out breathing. It is God breathing out His words, not breathing in to us in some inspiring fashion. We believe that the Bible came right out of the mouth of God. God breathed it out, He gave it, He said it.
Is it right to claim the same thing for a song? Is it right to claim the same thing for a book, for a sermon, for an idea, for a thought, for a ministry plan? Are we really experiencing direct revelation right out of the mouth of God?
Well we know we're not, don't we? I have never preached a God-breathed sermon. In that sense, I've never been the recipient of divine revelation through the means of divine inspiration so that God breathed in to me a sermon which I then preached to you.
What about speaking in tongues? What about people who get prophecies and words of wisdom and words of knowledge? Is that God-breathed revelation coming right out of the mouth of God? And is it equal then to any book of the Bible?
Well some are going to say you're pushing the point a little bit here. There are degrees of inspiration. Certain preachers can be inspired and certain songwriters can be inspired and certain people who receive revelations and words of wisdom and knowledge from God, they're inspired and I've had this discussion with many people through the years, they are inspired but they're not as inspired as the Bible writers. It's inspiration to a lesser degree. Some things are inspired to the maximum degree and that would be the books of the Bible and others are inspired to a lesser degree. But inspired means God-breathed. There are no degrees to what God said, either He said it or He didn't say it. Either God breathed it out, or He did not breathe it out, either the words are God's words or they are not God's words.
They can't be more or less from God. One way to understand that might be to think about the fact that we may refer to something as the highest, or the best, or the most. We call that a superlative, that's the end of the line. That's the highest mountain, or the best watch, or the most money. If this is true, there is no mountain higher, there is no watch better and there is no one with more money.
There's no higher than the highest, better than the best, or more than the most. And so there are no more inspired or less inspired writings of God. God is absolute, God's Word is therefore absolute, God is a superlative, God speaks in a superlative fashion, inspiration has no degrees, He said it or He didn't say it. And there are no songs and there are no books and there are no visions and there are no revelations and there are no sermons that are the direct revelation of God. In fact, to even consider that is a scary proposition since the entire Bible ends with the following words, Revelation 22, 18, I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, meaning the book of Revelation, but this is the end of the revelation of God, the canon, so it applies to anything added to this book which therefore would be added to Scripture in total since this is the final book. I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book. That's a very, very clear warning and that is how the Bible ends.
Don't add anything to this book and to add anything to that book would be to add something to the canon of Scripture which that book completes. And so to say that one is inspired in a biblical sense is a really serious claim to make. Not a single sermon of mine has ever been inspired by God. I take the Word which is inspired by God, was inspired and given to me in this complete term, and I endeavor to make that inspired message clear to you.
But my effort is my effort. Hopefully it's aided by the work of the Holy Spirit in my mind, but the words that I give you are my words as I attempt to explain to you the meaning of that revelation from God. I remember a woman preacher being interviewed one time on the radio and the question, I don't think the questioner knew the direction the answer would go, but he said, how do you get your sermons up? How do you get your sermons up? And she said in a rather ethereal voice, I don't get them up, I get them down. And he asked what in the world she meant by that and she went on to explain that they come down from heaven. Why, I wish that were true.
That would simplify your life a lot. Sermons that you write are simply reflections of what God has revealed in His Word. Sermons that you preach are simply efforts to make the already inspired and revealed Word of God clear to the listener.
Books that you write follow the same path. And I would be a fool to claim that God inspired my sermons, or that God inspired a book I might write, or a song. All my sermons need editing.
God doesn't need any editing. They are feeble at best in their attempt to take the Word of God and bring it to people through a human vehicle. And so we want to be careful that we protect the inspiration of Scripture. Now with that kind of an introduction, let's talk about a definition of inspiration. I'm going to be a little bit like a seminary professor, but we'll keep it down where I hope you can get it. What is the doctrine of inspiration?
Let me just give you some little categories to think in, okay? Revelation...revelation is the content...revelation is the content, it is God's disclosure of His truth. Revelation is the vehicle. Revelation is the content, inspiration is how He did it. When we talk about divine revelation, we're talking about the content, the message, the truth that God revealed or disclosed. When we talk about inspiration, we're talking about the method that God used, how He breathed it out. In revelation, God makes Himself known, in inspiration the Spirit of God takes the revelation and puts it through the mind of human writers in the Old and New Testament who write it down as it flows from God the Holy Spirit through their minds.
What they write down is the exact and authentic words that constitute the message God wants written down. Revelation then is the message itself and inspiration is the means by which it is given and ultimately recorded on the pages of Scripture. Now let me speak a little more clearly to this issue by traveling around it a little bit and suggesting some things that inspiration is not. Biblical inspiration is not a high level of human achievement. It is not a high level of human achievement. Through the years there have been critics of the doctrine of inspiration that God breathed out every word into the mind of writers who wrote it down so that every word is actually right from the mind of God.
There are some who have said that's not true. The Bible is just a high level of human achievement and you'd have to say that if you wanted to deny divine authorship because you're left with this astounding book with this massive amount of wisdom. And so you'd have to say that this is a compilation of things that have been written by people who are at a high level of religious genius.
They're like any other geniuses. It's like Homer's Odyssey, or it's like Dante's Divine Comedy, or Shakespeare's Tragedies. It's a high level of artistry, of literary craft, like any master work. The Bible is a master work of human genius, but very human and very fallible. This view exalts human authorship to the level of genius but denies divine authorship altogether.
This really doesn't work and it doesn't work for a lot of reasons, but I'll suggest a few things. The body of Jesus Christ and the way He is described surpasses everything in human thought. Whoever would invent a person like Jesus Christ, no one could come up with that kind of person. He surpasses in purity, in love, in perfection, in righteousness, anything ever found in any character in all of human literature. There is no one like Him anywhere in human literature, nowhere.
He is beyond the capability of any person to invent. And then when you realize that He is the theme of the entire Bible and you have a period of at least 1500 years and a little over 40 writers writing all over that space of time, that span of time for 1500 years and all that they say directed about Him is consistent and coherent and transcendent, it's inexplicable that such a loosely connected assemblage of human geniuses would all craft the same person who is remarkable beyond any human imagination. Furthermore, who would have written a book that damns the whole human race? Who would write a book, what collection of human geniuses would write a book that says there is no hope apart from this person Jesus Christ? All other religious books by all other religious geniuses, aided and abetted by supernatural geniuses that we would identify as demons, contain salvation by works.
They bow to human pride. There is no other person like Jesus Christ in any other religion in the world. And always genius exalts itself. And if the authors of the Bible were human religious geniuses who had just achieved a high level of genius, why didn't the Bible writers produce other writings equal to the ones in the Bible? The fact of the matter is, left to themselves, they could produce some good things but not inspired Scripture. Paul wrote a lot of letters. He wrote 13 in the New Testament, but he wrote a lot more than that that aren't in the New Testament. They were just Paul...Paul at his best, but just Paul. In fact, he wrote a couple to the Corinthians in addition to the two that are in the Bible, but they were not inspired by God. He was also a pastor like any pastor and an evangelist like any evangelist who was saying things that were true but they were not the directly inspired words out of the mouth of God. Inspiration cannot be just a high level of human genius.
You can't come up with Christ and you don't damn the whole human race and leave them no hope but this perfect Christ. Somebody else suggests that inspiration is extended just to the thoughts of the writers, that God just gave them noble ideas in their mind, planted thoughts. The first kind of inspiration is called natural inspiration, just human genius. Second kind is called thought inspiration. This view suggested that God came along at some point and gave these writers an idea, a religious idea, a spiritual idea and they were left free to express themselves as they liked.
This is a denial of verbal inspiration. If this is true, we are really wasting our time doing exegesis of the text because the words aren't the issue. Like the gentleman said to me on the Larry King show the other night, you're so caught up in the words, you're missing the message of the Bible.
That's a convenient view. The idea that there's some idea, concept, religious notion there that may or may not be connected to the words, but the Bible claims to be the very words of God. First Corinthians 2, 13, we speak not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches. Paul says, when I give the revelation of God, when I write down that which God inspires in me, it is not words coming from man's wisdom but which the Spirit teaches.
In John 17, 8 Jesus said, I have given unto them the words which you gave Me and they have received them. The message was in the words. There is no message apart from the words. There is no inspiration apart from the words. More than 3800 times in the Old Testament we have expressions like, Thus says the Lord, the Word of the Lord came, God said, it's about the words.
There aren't a such thing as wordless concepts anyway. When Moses would excuse himself from serving the Lord, he said, I need to do something else because I'm not eloquent. God didn't say, I'll give you a lot of great ideas, you'll figure out how to communicate them. God didn't say, I'll be with your mind. God said to him this, I will be with your mouth and I will teach you what you shall say. And that explains why 40 years later, according to Deuteronomy 4, 2, Moses said to Israel, you shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. Don't touch anything I command you because this is from God.
In fact, the opposite is true. Bible writers wrote down words they didn't understand. In 1 Peter chapter 1, we are told there that the prophets wrote down the words and didn't understand what they meant. The prophets, verse 10 of 1 Peter 1, who prophesied of the grace that would come, made careful search and inquiry seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the suffering of Christ and the glories to follow. Here they are writing about the sufferings of the coming Messiah, writing about the glory to follow the suffering of the Messiah. And then they're searching what they wrote, they're inquiring in the very words which they were inspired to write to figure out what person and what time is in view.
They couldn't even interpret fully the meaning of the words they were actually writing. God did not give ideas without words, but in some cases He gave words without complete ideas. In Matthew 24 35, the Scripture is very clear, heaven and earth shall pass away but My words, My words shall not pass away. When God speaks, He speaks with words and the Bible is the representation in writing of the words that came from God...the words that God spoke. Thoughts are married to words like a soul is connected to a body. One writer says, as for thoughts being inspired apart from the words which give them expression, you might as well talk of a tune without notes, or a sum without numbers.
We cannot have geology without rocks or anthropology without men. We cannot have a melody without music, nor can we have a divine record of God speaking without words. Thoughts are conveyed by words and the thoughts of God were conveyed by the words of God and passed on to us through the means of God breathing those words into the minds of the writers to write exactly what He wanted them to write and collecting it all in the Bible. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, explaining the doctrine of inspiration. The title of his current study here on Grace To You, Making a Case for the Bible. And friend, going back to what I said before the lesson, friends like you play a critical role in helping us get biblical truth into the minds and hearts of God's people across the globe to help Grace To You make verse-by-verse Bible teaching available through our apps, our books, television, internet content, and these daily radio broadcasts.
Get in touch with us today. You can mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. You can also give online at gty.org or when you call us at 800-55-GRACE. Thank you for helping us equip people the world over with biblical truth and again, to express your support, call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to the website gty.org. Our website is also the place you can go to download John's current series, Making a Case for the Bible. In fact, you'll find all of the studies we've aired on radio, plus hundreds of sermons that have yet to air.
That's more than 3,600 messages free to download in audio and transcript format. Our website again, gty.org. And if I could ask a favor, would you pray with us that God would use His truth to strengthen hearts and minds even this day for His glory? That's the most important way you can partner with us in ministry. And thank you for doing that. Now for John MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Be back tomorrow as John continues Making a Case for the Bible with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
