The Inspiration of Scripture

Scripture doesn't come from any human source. It is a miraculous book authored by God through the Holy Spirit, moving human writers to write exactly what God wanted said. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

You've seen the self-help books, you've heard the self-help talk shows—different people offering different solutions to all the same problems. Well, if you're looking for the one source you should trust, stay here as John MacArthur continues his look at how to get the most from God's Word on Grace To You. But John, before you begin today's lesson on the inspiration of Scripture, I'd like you to respond to a question that came in on our Q&A line from a listener named Debra.

It's a short question, but it's an important one. My name is Debra. My question is, what versions of the Bible are better than others and why? Thank you, John.

Well, thank you, Debra, and that's a big question. The short answer is that I have preached for decades from the New American Standard Translation of the Bible. There's a reason I have done that, because I have felt through the years that it is the best translation. You may be more familiar with the King James Version or the New King James Version or the ESV, and there are many others. But what you look for in a Bible translation, just to be clear, foundationally clear, is that it is based upon an accurate translation of the original texts of Greek and Hebrew, Greek in the New Testament, Hebrew in the Old Testament. So let me explain that a bit. The job of a translator is to find exactly what the author said.

Let me say that again. The job of a translator is to find exactly what the author said and say that again in the language he's translating into. Now, notice the word author. Translation has to do with what the author said. Translation does not have to do with what the reader reads. But that has become very confusing over the last number of decades, because people have translated the Bible thinking of what the reader will read. In other words, accommodating the reader, changing whatever needs to be changed because the vernacular has changed or the culture has changed and you're trying to reach the reader.

Now, let me be clear. We want to reach the reader. We want to reach people in the current culture, in the current world. But you do not find that as the job of the translator. The job of the translator is to be completely consistent and faithful to what the writer intended.

Closing the gap between the writer and the modern reader or any reader is not the job of the translator. It's the job of the preacher and the teacher. That's why we say it, Grace, to you. We are basically unleashing, unpacking, unveiling Scripture one verse at a time. We show you what it originally meant.

That is our job. We start with an accurate translation and then we do an exposition, which moves from the author to the reader. So any of the translations that are committed to an accurate handling of the original text are the ones you definitely want to use.

Yes, you do. And thank you, John. That's a helpful clarification. Friend, when you read your Bible, it's essential to make sure you know its meaning, that you understand what you're reading. To help, here again is John MacArthur to continue his series, How to Get the Most from God's Word. Let me remind you that the Bible is the most powerful book in existence, the most powerful piece of literature ever penned. According to Hebrews 4.12, it is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, and it has the capability to pierce into the very soul of man and dissect man and reveal his own nature and his own character and his own sinfulness, his own longings, be they for sin or for God. It can literally tear you to pieces.

It cuts deep. It is a powerful and living tool that God uses to expose the heart and the truth about us to ourselves. But not only does the Bible tear you to pieces, it puts you together again. According to 1 Peter chapter 1, the Apostle Peter reminds us that we have a living and abiding Word of God that is an imperishable truth upon which God builds a foundation of eternal life and glory. So while the Word has the power to cut and to tear and to shred our confidences and to reveal the truth about the inner recesses of our hearts, it also has the power to put us back together again. According to 1 John 1.4, John said, these things I write unto you that your joy may be full. The Bible also is the source of consummate joy built on perfect peace and hope for time and eternity. This is the most powerful book in existence. And that because in order to accomplish these living things, it must be not the Word of men, but the Word of the living God.

And that is exactly what it is. That's why Psalm 138 2 says God has exalted the Word to the very level of His own name. It is impossible to separate the glory of the Word from God Himself because this is indeed His own Word.

The Bible is not the Word of men, it is the Word of God. And I want to talk about that a little because if you're going to be a student of Scripture, it will be largely predicated on your confidence in the Scripture and your understanding of what it is you're dealing with. The Bible is revealed truth. In it, God speaks. I want you to turn to several Scriptures to understand this.

First of all, Hebrews chapter 1. In Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, we have a good summation of the idea of revelation, that is truth revealed. God, it says, has spoken literally long ago to the fathers by the prophets in many portions and in many ways. In these last days, He has spoken to us in His Son.

And we'll stop at that point. Here we come across the reality that God has spoken. That sums up the matter of revelation. God has spoken, that is He has revealed Himself. He has disclosed Himself. God has revealed truth for men.

How did He do it? He did it to the fathers, that is to the fathers meaning the men who were the leaders of Israel, and even before them, of course, to the fathers known as the patriarchs in the Pentateuch, the book of Genesis primarily. God spoke long ago to those fathers of the nation Israel. He spoke by the prophets. That's just a generic term meaning the Scripture writers, or those who spoke for God, those who were God's spokesmen. It is a term that includes prophets, the technical term for those who are called prophets in the Old Testament. It also includes kings like David and Solomon. It would include priests like Samuel and others who were used by God to speak. The prophet used here then in sort of a non-technical generic sense of one who speaks for God. God spoke through human speakers and writers, meaning, of course, the writers of Scripture. He spoke, it says, in many portions, palumeros.

It's a word that means segments. It has to do with the fact that God spoke, and He's referring here to the Old Testament, and He spoke clearly using human instruments as the writers, and He did it in many portions. There are thirty-nine specific portions in the Old Testament, if we call those books portions, thirty-nine books. The Bible has sixty-six, the New Testament has twenty-seven, the Old has thirty-nine. So He spoke in many portions. Within those books, those thirty-nine books we could call portions, there are portions as well.

Those books break down and contain various and sundry portions, sections, paragraphs, etc. He did this over a lengthy period of time through numerous human prophets or writers, but all of it was God speaking. He also spoke, it says in verse 1, in many ways...in many ways.

What did He use to convey these words to those who would write it down? Well, visions. You know, of course, that there were a number of visions.

Even Moses had a vision of God in a burning bush in the wilderness. The vision of Isaiah is well known to us. The visions of Ezekiel are well known to us. There were numerous other visions that came to the prophets. In fact, often the prophets write speaking of their writings as visions. The vision of the Lord came to the prophets so and so, and He wrote. And then there were direct words from God by way of moving in the human mind and giving truth to the writer who first preached it so he could say he spoke it prophetically and then later wrote it down. God spoke to the writers of Scripture through parables, through types, through symbols, through ceremonies, through what we call theophanies, or appearances of God as the angel of the Lord, or even visible appearances of God such as in the burning bush. He spoke occasionally through an audible voice, thundering out from heaven in an audible way so as to be heard clearly and distinctly and specifically. So in many ways, in many segments, through many different human writers, God spoke.

That's what that verse is saying. And this is recorded then, this revelation of God in the Old Testament. Men were used to write down this revelation from God which God Himself revealed, men who were then enlightened and energized by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit then energizing them, we have in the Old Testament not a collection of the best of human wisdom.

This is not the best musings of religious ancient men. This is the very voice and Word of God. Then God spoke also, verse 2 says, in these last days, and that signifies the time of Messiah. The last days are the time when Messiah comes. Messiah came, born in Bethlehem, initiating the last days, and in the last days He has spoken to us in His Son. God revealed Himself in Jesus Christ.

And the record about Jesus Christ was then written down. The New Testament, 27 segments through varying authors, wrote down the revelation of God, particularly that came in and around the person of Jesus Christ. So you have the revelation of God in the inspired writers in segments called the Old Testament. You have the revelation of God through inspired writers in segments called the New Testament, 27 books and 39 equal to 66 books of Scripture. This is the revelation of God. It is the result, singularly the result of God's self-disclosure.

God has spoken. When you pick up a Bible, you're reading the Word of God. Now the process God used to put down this revelation is called inspiration. Inspiration is a word that defines a process.

It defines a means. And we can understand something of this means, and by the way, it is a supernatural means. When we talk about inspiration in a biblical sense, we're talking about a technical way in which God uses a supernatural miraculous process to reveal His own Word. Turn to 2 Peter for a good look at what this process is, 2 Peter chapter 1. And by God's goodness, He has disclosed to us this process of inspiration in the text of the New Testament so we can understand it. Verses 20 and 21, 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation.

For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Now these two verses are just loaded with significance with regard to this matter of inspiration. The key word here is the word moved in verse 21. Moved, carried along, born along.

It's a word that is used in secular Greek sources to refer to something floating downstream like a leaf. They were literally carried along by the Holy Spirit. The writers of Scripture, the men who wrote the Scripture, and by the way, there are no female writers of Scripture, all 66 books are written by men. So the Spirit of God moved these men along so that they actually spoke from God, born along by the Holy Spirit.

Let's look a little further into this text. Verse 21, no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will. Back to verse 20, know this first. No prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation.

Now there are two immediate disclaimers and both of them say Scripture doesn't come from any human source. It is a miraculous book authored by God through the Holy Spirit, moving human writers to write exactly what God wanted said. No prophecy of Scripture, that refers to all of it. No place in Scripture, it's not talking about prophecy in a predictive sense. Prophecy means to speak forth.

No message from God, no speaking forth of God contained in Scripture, nothing from God contained in Scripture is a matter of...look at that phrase...a matter of one's own interpretation. Now this needs a little bit of explanation. I really never have liked the translation interpretation here, because the Greek term is epilucis. If you know anything about the Greek language, luo is the word to loose, and this is a compound of loose. It's the idea of unleashing something.

It's the idea of unloosing something. No Scripture is of any human unleashing, and it's speaking of origin. It's speaking of source.

In the genitive case, the usage indicates source. So Peter is actually saying Scripture does not come from any human source. It isn't a question of some men having intimacy with God and some people knowing God and watching God work and having historical acquaintance with the operation of God, having a high level of human genius and a high level of religious sensitivity, writing down their best understandings of God.

It is not that. It isn't the worst of men and it isn't the best of men writing down their musings about God. No prophecy of Scripture, no message in Scripture anywhere is as to its source human.

None. And then in verse 21, he further strengthens the point by repeating it, no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will. That is a very remarkable statement. Nobody ever said, no matter how noble they might have been or how godly they might have been, I think I'll write Scripture. No one has ever said that and done that.

Some may have said it, but they didn't do it because it's impossible. No prophecy was ever made by an act of the human will. You can't produce Scripture from the human will. You can't produce Scripture by any private origin. Rather, men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

It doesn't come from men. No prophecy was ever born along by human will, same verb, but it was moved, born along, same verb, by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit selected the author. The Holy Spirit gave the message to the author so that what He wrote down was exactly the Word of God, inerrant and infallible. They spoke from God, writing exactly what God wanted said.

That's inspiration. Now turn to another Scripture, 2 Timothy. We could spend a lot of time on that text and have in the past, but for now, just to put you in touch with these very formidable claims so that you understand the character of inspiration, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

All Scripture is inspired by God. That's where we get that word, inspiration. Now this is pasa grafe theopneustos, the word theopneustos is God-breathed.

It's translated inspired here. It means God-breathed. If you didn't have any air, you couldn't speak.

If you couldn't breathe out air, you couldn't vibrate your vocal cords, you couldn't make any sound, couldn't form your words. What this is saying is God breathed out Scripture. God spoke it.

It is the very breath of God. And not just in the sense of breath, but in the sense of blowing out breath in a way that goes past the vocal cords, vibrates the vocal cords past the mouth which forms the annunciation and God produced exactly what He wanted said. God spoke it. In Psalm 33, you have a good comparative text for this, Psalm 33, 6, by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made.

And here's a synonym, by the breath of His mouth all their host. Here you have a statement, the Word of the Lord, and a parallel statement, the breath of His mouth. The breath of His mouth is the Word of the Lord. It was by the breath of His mouth, which is the Word of the Lord, that everything was created.

God spoke it into existence. So God breathed means God spoken, God said, God stated. Scripture then is God speaking. That is why Romans 3, 2 calls Scripture the oracles of God, the oracles of God. God is the author of what the Bible says. Everything in the Bible comes from God.

It is not a human book. All Scripture and every Scripture is God breathed. It comes past His vocal cords, if you will, in the supernatural sense, and it conveys to us precisely what He wanted to say. Every word of God is pure, Scripture says. Scripture cannot be broken, John 10, 35. Scripture will come to pass, though heaven and earth will fail because it is the living and abiding and eternal Word right out of the mouth of God Himself. Now some other things you need to understand about the inspiration of the Scripture. Paul does not say in 2 Timothy, and it's very important to note that, that the writers were inspired. He says all Scripture is inspired.

And you want to understand that. The writers were not inspired, the Scriptures were. We talked today about an inspired person, inspired to some great achievement or some great literary accomplishment, whatever it might be, some great scientific accomplishment. That's not what we're talking about. The Bible doesn't know anything about inspired men. It only knows about inspired words. You understand that?

That's very important. You say, what do you mean by that? I mean by that that Paul wrote some things that weren't inspired. It was not Paul that was inspired, it was Scripture that was inspired. And when Paul wrote Scripture, Scripture was inspired. When Paul wrote something else, it was not inspired. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, the two inspired books in the New Testament. But there is a letter that he wrote to them before 1 Corinthians and a letter between 1 and 2 Corinthians which do not appear in the Scripture because they were not inspired.

Paul is not just generally inspired. No Bible writer is. No Bible writer is. Isaiah was not an inspired writer as such, neither was David or Paul or John or anybody else. Only when they wrote Scripture were they the vehicle through whom God breathed out His Word.

Scripture is the Word of God, it is not the Word of inspired men. The writers wrote down the inspired Word. So God breathed into them the very words that He wanted them to write. And by some miraculous supernatural indescribable means, they wrote down exactly what God wanted said, which isn't difficult if you're God, He can certainly accomplish that. The actual process can't be described, it is miraculous.

It can't be defined, it is supernatural. Some have suggested that it was a high level of human achievement, not so. When man at the highest level of his achievement writes, he writes about himself and tends to exalt himself, not condemn himself. They couldn't produce the Scriptures and that's why they claim that God wrote it. They claim that God spoke to them. They claim they were writing the Word of God. And it's amazing that they not only claim it directly, and I'll mention that in a moment, but four thousand times in the Bible it claims that this is the Word of God, four thousand times. And that means four thousand times the writers affirm that they were writing the Word of God. But apart from those specifics, it has always fascinated me that there is in the Bible a certain air of infallibility that common men might find very difficult to live with. For example, if you decided you wanted to pass off something you wrote as divine revelation and you were just the average nobody, you might sort of be pressed to try to convince people that they ought to accept what you're saying as being directly from God.

So you might want to say somewhere in your writing, well, you know, I know this is hard for you to believe since I don't have any education and since I'm not a very prominent person, but I'm writing the revelation of God and you just need to know that. There's none of that. There's no, well, I know this seems impossible for you to accept this because you know who I am and I'm just this humble guy and you can't figure out how in the world this could ever be coming from me, but I'm just telling you folks, this is really coming from me and it's the Word of God. There's none of that, absolutely none of it. There's no attempt to justify this process of inspiration. There's no attempt to sort of make people believe that this is really happening.

There's no self-consciousness. The writers are utterly unconscious of themselves. There never is any kind of defense of themselves as the sources of revelation. The only time a writer ever defends himself like Paul does is to defend the viability of his ministry. Nearly 4,000 times they say they're writing the Word of God and yet nobody ever sort of chuckles and says, I know you're finding this hard to accept. There's no self-consciousness, even though most of them had no education in a formal way, no extensive training, and were in no earthly position to do any such writing and were not particularly profound and are not known for writing anything else, with the exception of Solomon who wrote so many proverbs, they aren't all in the Bible by any means, and David who was a songwriter and must have written many, many, many songs. And yet you have someone like Moses who is not known as a writer of anything. In the Pentateuch, 680 times he claims that he's writing the Word of God and is never self-conscious about it. The prophetic books have 1,307 such claims.

The history books, 418, the poetic books nearly 200 such claims, and yet there's no self-consciousness about that. They were just writing the Word of God the way God gave it to them. New Testament writers affirm the Old Testament as God's Word. In fact, 320 times New Testament writers quote the Old Testament as God's Word. One thousand times they allude to it as God's Word in a clear and definite reference to some Old Testament passage. So 1,300 times New Testament writers affirm the Old Testament, and they do it in the Law, the Pentateuch.

They do it in the history books. They do it in the Minor Prophets, the Major Prophets, and the Holy Writings, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and so forth. In other words, they affirm every section of Old Testament Scripture as being the Word of God in unselfconscious ways.

And then they in the New Testament go on to write what they write with that same utter absence of self-consciousness. That's important truth from John MacArthur, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, Bible teacher here on Grace to You, and John has been explaining how God inspired the Bible and what that means for the way you read God's Word. Today's lesson is part of John's series, How to Get the Most from God's Word.

And friend, keep in mind you can get this entire series on five MP3 downloads for free, or you can purchase a five CD album if that's better for you. It's an ideal resource to review with a young believer. You can pick up a copy of How to Get the Most from God's Word when you get in touch with us today. The CD album is reasonably priced, shipping is free, and you can order it by calling 800-55-GRACE.

That translates, by the way, to 800-5547223. Or you can go online to our website, gty.org. There you can also download all five messages from How to Get the Most from God's Word free of charge in MP3 and transcript format.

You can get those at gty.org. And while you're there, gty.org, make sure you download our two free apps. There's the Study Bible app and the Grace to You Sermons app. The Study Bible app gives you the text of Scripture, and for a nominal price you can add the notes from our flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible. And the Grace to You Sermons app gives you access to all of John's teaching on your mobile device. You can also watch the Grace to You television broadcast or read the Grace to You blog, and much more. To download these apps and begin learning God's Word, visit gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Be sure to watch Grace to You television this Sunday, check gty.org for local airtimes, and then be here Monday as John continues unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.