The very integrity of Jesus Christ rests on the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration. That is that in total this is the inspired Word of God and in every word it is the inspired Word of God. That is the doctrine that Jesus believed in and if Jesus believed it His integrity is at stake. We either have a divine Savior and an infallible Bible or neither. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Scripture is mocked by Hollywood and attacked by scholars and even banned in some countries. There are even people in the church who assault God's Word.
At the very least, there are those who doubt its veracity. The question is, how can you keep from becoming one of them, from questioning the trustworthiness of Scripture? And how should you answer objections from critics about the truthfulness of the Bible? John MacArthur is going to help build your confidence in God's Word and equip you to defend it today as he continues his study called, Is the Bible Reliable?
With the lesson now, here's John. John MacArthur The strongest objective support for biblical inspiration and authority is the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. That's the strongest objective testimony. The greatest witness to the truth of the Bible that ever lived was Jesus Christ. If Jesus said it's true, it's true.
That's the greatest support. There can be no more reliable witness to the nature of Scripture than the one who died and rose to be the Savior, Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ rules His church by His Spirit and by His Word. And recently, though, there has been a rather destructive heresy that has crept into Christianity. And that is the heresy that says the Bible contains errors. If something is taught in Scripture, they tell us, it may or may not be true. It may be true, but then again it may not be true. In other words, Scripture isn't really a basis for believing anything.
It just might be a basis. If you say that there are some things that aren't true, then who judges what is and what isn't? Now once you've let the cat out of the bag, you're finished because then men become the arbitrary deciders of what's in and what's out. You see, in history past we had an interesting thing. You study the history of the church for the most part and you find this, that in the history of the church in the past years, it was the skeptics versus the Christians.
I mean, it was pretty clearly drawn. The skeptics said the Bible's not true, it contains errors. The Christians said it is true, it does not contain errors. But recently it's the Christians against the Christians. And I use the word Christian in one sense, at least advisedly, it's the so-called Christians against the true Christians. And maybe some critics of biblical inerrancy are really born again.
That even adds greater dimension to the miracle of the new birth. But today we not only have to fight the skeptics outside theology, we've got to fight people who call themselves Christians and go around propagating the fact that the Bible has errors. The very integrity of Jesus Christ rests on the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration. That is that in total this is the inspired Word of God and in every word it is the inspired Word of God. That is the doctrine that Jesus believed in and if Jesus believed that His integrity is at stake, we either have a divine Savior and an infallible Bible or neither.
Not a divine Savior and an errant Bible because He said it was without error. Now the critics of inspiration usually bring up three areas of problems and we're going to look at the Word of God and see if we can answer them. Number one, they say the Bible is not inspired because it disclaims inspiration. In other words, at places in the Scripture it denies that it is inspired. They say there are passages which clearly disdain inspiration. Say what passage? The one they always point to is 1 Corinthians 7.
Let's look at it and let's see whether it disclaims inspiration. 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Now here Paul the apostle distinguishes between his instruction and the Lord's instruction. And at first glance he seems to be perhaps saying that some of his writings are not inspired.
But as you look closer you're going to find that just the reverse is true. Look at 1 Corinthians 7 verse 6. 1 Corinthians 7, 6, and here's one of the disclaimers that the critics and modernists use. Paul says, but I speak this by permission, not by commandment. They say, now you see there Paul is saying that this is not something that comes authoritatively from God. That here he's giving his opinion. It's just a matter of his opinion.
It is not anything that is inspired of God. Is that what he's saying? Look what he's saying. I speak this by way of permission, is the literal translation, not by commandment. Now what he's saying is simply this. I am permitting you to do something, but I am not...what? Commanding you to do it.
Now that seems very simple. I am speaking to you by way of permission, not of commandment. I am not commanding you to do something.
I am simply allowing you to do it. What is the something? Being married is the something. Now he's talking here about marriage. He says in verse 2, let every man have his own wife and every woman have her own husband. Now if it stopped there, we'd be in trouble because all the single people in the church would be living in open disobedience. So he says a little further down, now folks, I want you to know that God wants to permit you to be married but it isn't something that you have to do. In fact, he kind of even backs off of it a little ways.
It's kind of interesting. He says, I would that all men were even like I am. But every man has his proper gift of God one after this manner and another after that.
I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it's good for them if they abide even as I. And Paul was single. You know, for him it was an advantage. Can you imagine if he had a wife at this point? He may have at one time but the poor woman would have been driven to distraction by his absence. I mean and she would have been worried to death because he was forever in a particularly difficult problem. So he said if you're unmarried or a widow, that's great.
Stay that way. But if they can't have self-control, let them marry for it's better to marry than to burn. Now you can argue about what the burn means.
I think the interpretation is to burn with passion. Some of us have to get married or we get in trouble. In other words, we're made with needs that demand a partner. So all Paul is saying in this passage is, look, when I said in verse 2, let every man have his own wife and went on to talk about marriage, I am merely saying that this God allows but it is not that I am commanding this because if you're single and God has that gift for you, terrific. You can be like I am and you won't have the encumbrances of life that a married person has. But if you can't have self-control, get married.
That's practical. But if you look at it in the context, is it a disclaimer to inspiration? It has nothing to do with that.
They pull another one out of here too. 1 Corinthians 7, 10, and unto the married I command, yet not I but the Lord. Now look at verse 12, but to the rest speak I not the Lord. Now the critics say, you see, in one verse he says it's the Lord, in another verse he says it's not the Lord, it's just plain old me talking. So you see, there are parts of Scripture that are not inspired.
Now if Paul laid a disclaimer on inspiration in verse 12, how do we know that that isn't true of other places where he just gives his opinion? Now do you want to know why it is that, for example, in major denominations they can bypass all of the passages about women elders? There is no such thing as a woman elder, incidentally, because an elder has to be the husband of one wife, so there couldn't be a woman elder. But there are in some churches. You say, well, how do they allow for a woman elder?
It's very simple. That was Paul's opinion. I mean, if Paul gave his opinion in 1 Corinthians 7, he'd give his opinion somewhere else, we'll just take it as opinion and chuck it.
Now you see how convenient that is? You see, once you give in the ground here and agree that this is an opinion and not a commandment of God, or that this is something less than inspiration, then you've really opened the door and every time they don't want to buy something they just say it's an opinion. Why is it that in some of the major denominations you have some of the greatest movements of women to try to usurp authority in the church? Women priests arguing and hassling about whether they have the right to preach and perform communion, etc., etc.
You say, well, what do they do with the passages that say that that's for a man and a woman is not to usurp authority? That's an opinion. That's Paul's opinion.
See, once you allow for that, then it's gone. And then you can say, well, that's his opinion. Well, that's his opinion. Pretty soon you've opinionized the Bible away.
And then all you've got left is the words of Jesus and when He offers an opinion, it's binding. Well, what does it say? You say, you keep talking, MacArthur, but you don't tell me what it means. All right, I'll tell you what it means. 1 Corinthians 7, 10, unto the married I command, yet not I but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her husband.
What is He referring to? He's saying that I am telling you something that didn't originate with me, it originated with the Lord. I'm quoting Jesus and He quotes right out of Matthew 5, 31 and 32. Under the married I command, yet not I but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her husband. And, of course, the statement of Jesus in Matthew 5, 31 and 32 is what He refers to. And what is the statement?
I'll read it to you. Jesus simply said, it hath been said, whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, cause her to commit adultery, etc. In other words, Jesus said, stay together.
And apparently it even was broader than that. And Paul is saying here, I'm not telling you anything new, I'm merely restating you what Jesus said. Stay married. You see, in the Old Testament, a divorce was relatively easy. And Jesus came along and said, I'm telling you that if you allow for a divorce under any other grounds than adultery, you cause the wife to commit adultery and so forth. And Paul is saying, now when I say to you, stay married, it's not just me, but it's the Lord who commanded it.
You see what he's saying? Now when you go to verse 12, the rest speak I, not the Lord. Now he says, I'm no longer quoting Jesus, I'm speaking. It is not that he's saying I'm not inspired, he's just saying I'm not quoting Jesus. Jesus had already taught that marriage was to be permanent.
Divorce was permitted only for adultery. And now beginning in verse 12, Paul adds his own inspired teaching to the teaching that Jesus had already given. He doesn't say, I'm just going to throw my opinion. He says, no, the Lord taught that, now let me add to what the Lord said.
Friends, not only is he not minimizing his teaching, he's putting it on an equal basis with the teaching of whom? Of Jesus Himself. Paul said, the Lord commanded that, now I'm going to tell you something. This isn't something the Lord said, this is new revelation. If a brother has a wife that believes not and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And the woman who hath a husband that believeth not, if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. This is something Jesus never talked about. What happens when one member of the family gets saved?
Paul says, stay together. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Else were your children unclean, but now they're holy. But if the unbelieving depart, let them depart. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases.
Now there's a potent statement. Jesus said, you will not be allowed to be divorced on any other grounds than what? Adultery. Did you realize that Paul added another ground? If an unbeliever wants out, let him what?
Depart. You're not in bondage in such cases. You say, you mean Paul added to the words of Jesus? You mean Jesus made a qualification and Paul added to it another qualification on an equal basis?
Absolutely. There are two grounds for divorce in the New Testament, adultery and an unbeliever who will not live with a believer who wants out. He has the freedom to go and you're not under bondage in such cases because God has called us to peace. God knows that if you're a Christian and there's no way that that partner is going to come to Christ and He makes your life brutally miserable that it's better for you to be separated because God has called you to what?
Peace. And so Paul actually adds a word to the Word of Christ Himself. Friends, this is not...this is not minimizing Paul's opinion, this is putting his opinion on an equal basis with all Scripture, Old Testament and the Word of Christ Himself. So rather than disclaiming divine authority, he actually places his own commands on an equal basis with Old Testament Scripture and equal of the words of Jesus. And you have to remember that things are qualified as we go through the Scripture, it's progressively revealed.
Let me give you another one. Look at verse 25. And here again they say the same thing. Well, see, here's his opinion. Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord, yet I give my judgment. You say, see, he's just giving his opinion again. That is not his opinion. He is simply saying Jesus didn't say anything about this area but I will speak. I don't hesitate to speak, though Jesus never said a word about it, I hasten to give my judgment.
You say it's just your opinion. Look at verse 40. At the end of the verse, he concludes this whole discussion with this statement, I think also that I have...what?...the Spirit of God. This is not opinion, friends, this is divine revelation. Paul does not give his opinion. He reveals the will and the mind of the Holy Spirit and he concludes the whole section with that statement. So the disclaimers are not disclaimers at all.
They are actually the opposite. And instead of disclaiming inspiration, Paul puts his own statements on an equal level with Old Testament Scripture and on an equal basis with Jesus Christ, even adding to the qualifications for divorce that our Lord Himself gave. Let me give you a second area. The critics secondly say, well, the Bible is full of errors because of transmission trouble. Now some of you know about transmission trouble but it isn't this kind. The Bible has problems in its transmission. You see, they might say, well, you fundamentalists are right that the original autographs maybe were perfect. And that's what we're saying when we say the Bible is verbally inspired and without error in its words in every detail, we mean in the original autographs, the original copies.
And so they say, you see, that's fine if you want to say that in the original. But do you realize that the original were written thousands of years ago and all down through the years? People copied, copied, copied, copied, copied, copied and there are all kinds of mistakes in there and we don't know what we've got in this Bible. I mean, this thing is so far away from the original, it's ridiculous. What gives us the idea that this is accurate like the original was? And incidentally there are no original manuscripts left. You know why? Because somebody put them up somewhere and bowed down to them, believe me. They're gone. So the critics say, we have no accurate manuscripts.
This was a hue and cry a few years back. The preservation and circulation of Scriptures cannot be guaranteed. We don't know whether they are accurate. How do we know that this Bible we hold in our hands that's written in English has any relationship to the original thousands of years ago, scribes may have messed it up all the way down the line. It's good, fair criticism if it's a criticism indeed.
Let me just add a few thoughts to that. The Bible was written originally by its writers. Then a process of copying began. The original scrolls were copied by scribes, that's what scribes were, copiers. And scribes believed that they were copying the Word of God and they were super careful. They had specially trained and dedicated men who took on them to copying process. They had principles of checking and rechecking, long and painful work, a demanding, extreme care was their lot for their lifetime. And they were lifetime scribes. They knew it as God's holy Word and they wanted it reproduced as such. Christian scholars even in the Christian era have taken to the study of manuscripts with as great an intensity, perhaps, in many cases. The scribes were careful because they believed the very words they dealt with were the words of God.
Let me add this. It is exciting to realize that in the opinion of most scholars today, aside from a few skeptics who haven't checked it out, in the opinion of most scholars, the text that you hold in your hands right now is practically identical to the original. That's no problem for me. If God is powerful enough and intelligent enough to write it, He certainly can take care of it. Do you realize that your Bible that you hold in your hand, though it is an ancient book, has been established with greater certainty than any other ancient book in existence? The Bible has more manuscript evidence and by that I mean this, they have found copies of the Bible on scrolls and parchments and papers all over the place. And the more they find, the more agreement they find. And they find a scribe over here in one century cranking it all out and they find that parchment. Here's another one over here in another parchment and they bring them together and they're identical. And out of two different cultures and two different time periods by two different men who never met and they say somewhere the source has maintained its purity because everybody's coming up with the same copies.
It's a powerful point. A.T. Robertson is a great scholar, said this, and I quote, there are some 8,000 manuscripts of the Latin and at least 1,000 for the other early versions. Add to that 4,000 Greek manuscripts and we have 13,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament. And all 13,000 essentially agree.
That's exciting. God has preserved it. This shows the pure preservation of Scripture. 13,000 manuscripts written at different periods, different origins from all different areas and by all different men in all different periods of time agree. In the New Testament, for example, textual scholars who study all these manuscripts find there are certain areas of human errata, that means error, mistakes, and a scribe copying may get a letter wrong or there may be some kind of an inverted word order or something like that.
They have found that there are certain things. But it is less than one word in every thousand. In fact, one out of every 1,580 words in the Old Testament has any kind of configuration that varies with another one in another manuscript. Listen to this, quoting from Morris, although there are varying readings in the manuscripts, over 99 percent of the variations are spelling...spelling. I mean we can understand if a guy didn't spell too well. Over 99 percent of all the errors are spelling mistakes.
Friends, that's exciting. Less than one percent of anything in here is a true error and that's after centuries and centuries and centuries. What about Old Testament manuscripts? Why, for the Old Testament, we have the Masoretic Text, a group of scribes who lived around 500 A.D. We have the Septuagint. Incidentally, the Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Old Testament. It was done before Christ and it's quoted frequently by particularly the writer of Hebrews.
We have the Latin Vulgate by Jerome. We have the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac version and then the greatest discovery of all is what? The Dead Sea Scrolls. You know, I can't help but go to Israel and go in that Dead Sea Scrolls place and just get goose bumps all over me. You know, and if you don't know what's going on, you say, this is really a musty old thing, what is all this? And you just look up there and there is the Dead Sea Scrolls and it's exciting. And you go down to Qumran and they tell you about a little kid who was trying to chase a sheep out of a cave and he threw a rock in there and he heard a piece of pottery break and he went in and found the whole thing. You say, what was it? It's a manuscript of the Old Testament.
You say, what's so important about it? Those Dead Sea Scrolls go back past the New Testament, past the time of Christ, past way back and they slide right up against the Old Testament. You know, there's 400 years between the end of the Old and the beginning of the New and the Dead Sea Scrolls slide right up to the end of the Old Testament. That's exciting, folks, because they're the whole Old Testament almost. And you know what's really exciting? The manuscripts that were put together in 500 A.D. are essentially identical to the Dead Sea Scrolls of perhaps as much as eight or nine hundred years before.
I mean, that's exciting. I stand there and look at those Dead Sea Scrolls and realize those very scrolls were being read by people who wanted to discover the Messiah before the Messiah even came. And what really thrills you is we've been having a Bible in our hands that came from some scrolls and some manuscripts that were put together in 500 A.D. and they found some nearly a thousand years older that agree exactly with them. Now if God can preserve it through that period of time, He can preserve it for all the time, can't He? That's why the Dead Sea Scrolls are so important. When the Dead Sea Scrolls showed up, a whole lot of critics should have gone right back into the caves that the Dead Sea Scrolls came out of. It is practically the entire text of the Old Testament. The scholars tell us any variation in the Dead Sea Scrolls from the Masoretic text is so minute it isn't even worth any significance. God has preserved His Word.
No, when somebody comes along and says we've got transmission problems, I say forget it. The same God who put it together preserved it. Yes, Jesus said, my words shall not, what, pass away. And listen, friend, part of the fulfillment of that prophecy is that the manuscripts stayed true. Now there are some manuscripts that are really faulty, but it's obvious.
We can tell because we have the good ones, the true ones. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, pastor, author, and chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary in the Los Angeles area. Today John continued his study titled Is the Bible Reliable? John, in today's message you showed how scribes, with such meticulous care, accurately preserved the biblical text throughout the centuries.
And I know you would say that the Bible we read today is still accurate, and it's a trustworthy guide for all of life in 2024. Yeah, I mean, it should be obvious to anyone that it's one thing to say the Bible is inspired, and that's what the Bible claims for itself. It's something else to say that God not only inspired the original but preserved it. And the preservation of Scripture can be demonstrated in history, and it's demonstrated for no other reason in the fact that we continue to find ancient manuscripts that demonstrate to us that we have an exact copy, an exact representation of those ancient manuscripts, even in our English version and in many other translations across the world today. So God has not only originally inspired his Word, but he has preserved it.
And that and other foundational considerations are part of a free booklet that we'd like to send you. The title is God's Sufficient Word. There is nothing more important than trusting the Word of God, trusting the Word of God for everything—for salvation, for sanctification, for eternity, for wisdom, true wisdom from above. You need to know why you can trust the Word of God. And so this booklet called God's Sufficient Word will help you to access that. In fact, it's likely to strengthen you no matter how strong a view you already have of Scripture. So I encourage everyone to get a copy of God's Sufficient Word, and we'll send it to anyone who asks. The Word of God can stand any scrutiny.
It has done that through the centuries. It is without error, unfailing, complete, authoritative, and sufficient. This booklet, God's Sufficient Word, will help you understand all of those realities. You don't need to have nagging doubts, and neither do the people you're trying to reach. You can get a copy of this, give it to them.
We'd love to send one your way. Again, God's Sufficient Word, free to anyone who requests a copy. Thanks, Jon, and friend, Jon's booklet will show you that the Bible is the only guide for everything that relates to life and godliness.
It will strengthen your own convictions about the truthfulness of God's Word and will give you the tools you need to help others trust the Bible as well. Ask for your free copy when you get in touch with us today. Call 800-55-GRACE during our normal business hours.
That's weekdays, 730 to 4 o'clock pacific time. Or you can make your request anytime at our website, gty.org. The title again, God's Sufficient Word. We'll send it to you for free. Just call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to the website, gty.org. And when you visit the website, again, gty.org, you'll find numerous ways to take in John McArthur's verse-by-verse teaching. You can listen to radio broadcasts that you've missed. You can watch Grace To You television. You can search Jon's entire sermon archive by date, by book of the Bible, by topic. That's 3,600 sermons, all of them free to download in audio and transcript format. And if you're not sure what to listen to first, a great option is Grace Stream. That's a non-stop broadcast of Jon's teaching that goes straight through the New Testament.
The web address again, gty.org. Now for Jon McArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today and be back tomorrow for a lesson that can help you effectively proclaim and defend God's Word. It's all part of Jon's current study called, Is the Bible Reliable? Tune in for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
