The Eternal Word of God

Welcome to this edition of PowerPoint with Jack Graham. Here is a video Satan himself, though he has tried many times, cannot destroy the Word of God. Time, the ravages of time which can do a number on us humanly can never change the Word of God. And every generation, generation after generation has found the Word of God powerful and life-changing.

A clear and certain message in a very changing world, in an uncertain world. We have this anchor, we have this hope and comfort of the Scriptures, we have the Word of God. And yet to so many the Bible is viewed as irrelevant and unnecessary, certainly unread by so many.

Even some in the church, their Bibles are on their shelves but not in their hearts. The Bible therefore is like secret buried treasure in their backyard that they've not yet discovered. There's no book like the Bible, it is preeminent among all of the books.

Nothing is comparable, it is an incomparable book. In its circulation, over 400 different languages translated, 1,500 languages in parts and partials of the Bible. No other book has been translated and reproduced like the Bible and we're so grateful for the translation of the Bible which has been given to us, many have not been privileged as we are privileged to hold in our hands so many copies of the Word of God. It is mammoth in its circulation, in its influence, it is incomparable, preeminent, the influence of the Bible, in literature, in history, in government, in politics, in any strain of life, any season of life, the Word of God is paramount.

To say that anything else comes close is to simply be ignorant of the facts and the truth, the Word of God, the testimony of Jesus. And this is true because the Bible provides so many benefits and so many blessings to our lives. The Bible gives us guidance for life's questions and solutions to life's problems, comfort when we hurt and how many of us have pillowed our heads at night through tears on the promises of the Word of God? The Bible gives us strength for life and endurance. The Bible gives us hope when there seems to be no hope.

The Bible gives us faith to believe for faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The Word of God gives us joy and pleasure, thy words were like honey, I did eat them and devoured them. The Word of God gives us peace.

How many times have we been calmed and soothed by the Scriptures as these wash over our souls? The Word of God gives us freedom to enjoy the fullness of our life in Christ. The Word of God gives us protection against the enemy and power to face every attack. The Word of God gives us deliverance and the Word of God gives us the message of salvation in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. This is the Word of God. The hero of the Bible is Jesus, the message of the Bible is Jesus, all this book is about Jesus.

It is the story of redemption and salvation. Believing in living God's Word brings amazing favor upon your life. God's Word is insight, is instruction as to how to live.

So to sum it up, Scripture is the vehicle that God has chosen to reveal Himself in a supernatural way to you. Now there is a general revelation, a natural revelation of God in creation, the heavens declare the glory of God. God has revealed Himself naturally and generally in our conscience.

Every person on the face of the earth has the ability to believe. He has given to every man the measure of faith. Every person has a God consciousness and even scientists today as they are discovering the mind and the power of the brain are discovering that we are hard-wired to know God. The Scripture says He has set eternity in our hearts. So there is the consciousness that we have with God, that is why man is innately and instinctively religious. But these are general revelations. But God wants us to know Him more and know Him better because while a sunset or a beautiful sunrise may say one thing about God, a terrible tornado or a storm or a tsunami may suggest something else.

So who is the maker of the universe and who is the creator of all things and who is the one who has made us with this capacity to know Him? God reveals Himself in the Scriptures, supernaturally He has inspired the Scriptures. Turn in your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter three and verse 16.

This is one of the great three-sixteens of the Bible. You know John 3, 16, well you should know 2 Timothy 3, 16. All Scripture, that means the Bible is inspired in a plenary sense.

All of the Scripture is inspired. All Scripture is, watch this, breathed out by God. Remember I said the life of God is in this book?

Your breath is the flow of your life. And the breath of God, He breathed out this book. While He used human authors, this is the breath of God, this book. God wrote this book, it is breathed out by God. That's the word inspired or literally expired, God's Word and is profitable for teaching and for reproof and for correction and for training in righteousness.

This is the Bible and all of it is inspired. This is the miracle, the supernatural miracle and the revelation of the Bible. Another miracle of the Bible is the miracle of illumination. When the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and applies it to our lives, we understand it.

We are able to assimilate it, we are able to get it. That's illumination, that's another miracle of the Bible. When God opens our eyes and opens our hearts to His Word. But there is another miracle and that's the miracle that I want us to concentrate on now for just a few moments and that's the miracle of the preservation of the Bible. God must make sure that His Word is not lost, that His Word is not distorted, that it is not changed in any way, that it is not diluted or polluted. So God supernaturally supervised, superintended the process and the keeping and the guarding of His Word through the generations. This is one of the most powerful reasons, evidences for our faith. I can name you many evidences and the evidence is compelling, the evidence is convicting regarding the Bible.

I can give you many reasons to believe the Bible. I can point to its scientific accuracy, I can point to fulfilled prophecy, I can point to historical confirmation, archaeological discovery, human transformation, life's changed. But the preservation, this miracle of God making sure that what we hold in our hands today is the Word of God, not the work of man. Now that's a miracle in this sense that the Bible was written, as you know, long ago. It is an ancient book, it is an age-old story and written thousands of years ago over a 1,500-year span by 40 generations, over 40 generations by 40 different authors.

And every one of the authors came from a different way of life, from priests to kings to shepherds to scholars to rabbis and common laborers. The Bible was written in many different places, from houses to fields to wilderness to prisons and dungeons, the Bible was given. It was penned in its original state in three languages, three very vibrant languages that God knew would be essential for communicating His Word. First in the very picturesque and powerful Hebrew language, then in Aramaic and then the Greek language which was the common language of the day of the New Testament. The Old Testament in Hebrew, portions in — of the New Testament in Aramaic but primarily in Greek. The Bible tells the story, the records of faith, exciting records of faith, the adventures of the Bible.

I've been loving them all of my life. It records hundreds of songs and other powerful principles and proverbs for life. It covers veritably every subject in life. I defy you to think of any subject that the Bible does not speak to that is essential for life and essential for living and yet it maintains a constant theme and a purpose throughout and that purpose is to introduce us to God and His redemption and His love and His salvation and to point us to Christ who died on the cross and rose again. This is the scarlet thread of redemption that runs through the Scripture. You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and today's message, The Eternal Word of God. Slow down and soak up the sacred meaning that's at the heart of the holiday season with Dr. O.S. Hawkins' 25-day Christmas devotional, The Christmas Code.

You'll see the birth of Jesus with fresh eyes as you take time to rest and rejoice in what really makes this season so special. The Christmas Code is our way to thank you for your gift to PowerPoint. This is the last week of this offer, so call today. Call 1-800-795-4627. That's 1-800-795-4627.

You can also text the word PowerPoint to 313131. And don't forget to visit JackGraham.org where you can shop our e-store or give a gift online or sign up for Dr. Graham's free daily email devotional. Our website again is JackGraham.org. Now let's get back to today's message, The Eternal Word of God. God made sure that through the centuries that His Word was kept. What did Jesus say about it?

That's important. Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5, 18, for truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, these are small markings in the Hebrew language, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law, speaking of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, not a jot, not a tittle shall depart from the Word of God until it is accomplished. Interestingly enough, some of the stories that are most questioned and attacked, those stories regarding creation, those regarding Noah and the great flood and mankind's sin, Adam and Eve, all those foundational truths of the Bible were in the law, in the Pentateuch. And Jesus said concerning these books, none of this shall be distorted or tossed aside, not one. And then in the final chapters of Matthew, you're in Matthew, turn to Matthew 24 verse 35, heaven and earth will pass away but My words will not pass away. There's coming a time when all your stuff is gonna be gone.

Your car, your house, your computer, your flat screen, all that good stuff, it's all gonna pass away. But the Word of our God will stand, shall rise forever. This is why we need to live for what lasts and give ourselves to those things which are eternal rather than what is temporal.

Not a word of it. So we believe not only in the plenary inspiration of the Scripture, but the verbal inspiration of the Bible which means God did not only give us the great thoughts and the ideas of the Bible, but He gave us word for word His truth. This is the inerrancy of the Bible, truth without any mixture of error. And so God is so committed to your knowing Him that He miraculously made sure that you heard from Him and that His Word is preserved. Now this is a big issue because you would remember that the printing press was not invented until 1,500 years after Christ. So how did God superintend? What was this process by which God kept His Word clean and pure?

First it was from generation to generation, from life to life, lip to lip, person to person. As Moses delivered it, this is why in the Hebrew text we discover in Deuteronomy that the family was called to sit down at the tables in morning and evening and, and deliver the Word of God to one another and to their children and they were to wear it as frontlets on their heads and on their bodies, on their wrists. They set aside the Word of God as holy, it was read and it was copiously copied by scribes that were custodians of the Scripture and the keeping of the Word of God. And through the years, manuscripts were written and compared. While we do not have original copies of the Bible, what we have is thousands of manuscripts. It is clear through the manuscripts that are compared through centuries and centuries and centuries of time that what we have in our hands today as the Word of God is veritably as it was thousands of years ago. Many variances that we may have regarding the manuscript are insignificant.

Maybe a word that is different here and there or it may be a different way of looking at the same story that is told by a different author in a different way. There are explanations as to even the small variances, but I can tell you that even in such a technicality that even the variances that we may find from the ancient manuscripts do not in any way undermine the great truths, the great doctrines, the great words of Scripture. The Word of God will stand forever. Voltaire was a noted atheist of the 19th century. He made the statement that in less than a generation, he said in less than 100 years, the Bible will be a museum piece in less than a generation. Well Voltaire is dead.

And in less than 50 years of his death, the Geneva Bible Society bought his home for the purpose of printing and distributing the Word of God throughout all of Western Europe. The Word of God stands. And the more you hammer it, it is like an anvil that resists every single blow.

Infallible, incorruptible, imperishable. The next time somebody says to you, well what about all those inaccuracies in the Bible? What about all those inconsistencies in the Bible?

What I want you to do is just say, show me one. Now most people are gonna tuck their tails and go the other direction because they're only repeating what somebody else said. If someone is up on the facts and point to some of the so-called differences in the way the Bible may be explaining a story or the so-called inaccuracies of the Bible, every one of these, if you will do your homework, are easily explained, counteracted with the Word of God. But there are no inconsistencies in the Bible. The Bible is timeless. The Bible is always truthful. So the point is, this book is eternal, but I want to close this message by asking you, for you, is it personal?

It's very personal to me, this issue of the Bible. I want to know that God's Word is living in me. And I've spent my life studying seriously the Bible.

And I'm not finding hidden flaws, I'm finding hidden beauties. And the more I dig into the Scripture, the greater I discover my God because when you get into the Word of God, you get the God of the Word in your life. The Word of God is living, powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword.

So let me tell you how that has happened in my life. Here's how I've studied the Bible. Someone gave this little idea as to how to approach the Scripture to me when I was just a teenager and I've been doing it ever since. Number one, when you come to a text in the Bible, read it through. Read it through slowly, read it through systematically. Better to read the Word of God slowly than skimming and skipping over great passages. Think deeply, read it through.

There's so many opportunities now. There are Bible applications, there are applications on your cell phone for goodness sake that will give you Bible reading plans. Wherever you go, you can read the Bible systematically and slowly. And then think it clear, I typically will bombard every text with questions. Questions like, is there some truth here for me to understand? Is there some duty here that I am to perform? Is there some sin here that I am to confess? Is there some error here that I am to avoid?

Is there some promise here that I am to trust and to believe? Is there some example that I am to follow? Think it clear. Ask God to speak to you through His Word. Thirdly, write it down. Write in the margins, underline your Bible. Get a journal, a notebook and journal your walk with Christ. I promise you, if you want to give a legacy to your children, give them a Bible that has been used for your lifetime filled with the Word of God, filled with underlying Scriptures and quotations and what God has said to you.

Or give them a journal that — what Christ has done in your life and this will be the most valued treasure of their lifetime. Write it down, then pray it in. So many wonder how they're gonna spend time praying. How do you spend 30 minutes praying?

How do you spend an hour praying? Well, one way is to pray the Scriptures. When you pray the Scriptures properly, you are always praying the Word of God. You're praying the will of God. And when you pray the Scriptures, there is a powerful, powerful sense of God's presence. As the Bible becomes alive in you, it saturates your soul. You pray it in.

Number five, live it out. Don't just be a hearer of the Word but a doer of the Word. Test the Word of God. Apply the Word of God to your life. This is not theory. This is not theology alone. This is the timeless, applicable truth of God's Word for your daily living.

Try it. Number six, give it away. Tell someone what you're learning in God's Word, especially your children and share it with your spouse.

Now don't go to every person at work like a know-it-all, like you know something that they don't. But just sincerely share what Christ is doing in your life and be a witness of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus and watch lives change around you. The grass withers.

The flower fades. But the Word of our God will stand again and again and again forever and ever and ever. Amen. You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and today's message, The Eternal Word of God. As you prepare for Christmas, we want to help make sure you don't miss a moment of what God wants to say to you. Slow down and soak up the sacred meaning that's at the heart of the holiday season with Dr. O.S. Hawkins' 25-day Christmas devotional, The Christmas Code.

Dr. O.S. Hawkins is a longtime friend of Dr. Graham and the two have often collaborated in the work of the Gospel, encouraging each other in both life and ministry. And in The Christmas Code, Dr. Hawkins helps you encounter the birth of Jesus with fresh eyes and rejoice in what really makes this season so special. The Christmas Code is our special thanks for your gift to help boldly proclaim God's Word through PowerPoint. This is the last week of this offer, so call today. Call 1-800-795-4627. That's 1-800-795-4627.

You can also text the word PowerPoint to 313131. And don't forget to visit Jack Graham.org where you can shop our e-store or give a gift online or sign up for Dr. Graham's free daily email devotional. Our website again is Jack Graham.org. Pastor, what is your PowerPoint for today? Well, here's the fact, God loves you and He loves you so much that He wants to build a relationship with you and He has spoken to us in the last few weeks of this event. He's spoken to us in His Word, His truth, the Bible. God gave us His Word and His Word is eternal. That means that God's Word is forever.

It doesn't change. Just like God Himself does not change, His Word does not change. We know that the Bible is truth. I believe so strongly in the inerrancy of the Scripture. That means the Bible is without error.

And there's so much evidence to demonstrate the inerrancy of the Bible, that the Bible is truth without any mixture of error. But the question I want to ask you is this, is the Word of God in you? Are you reading the Word of God? Are you meditating upon Scripture? Are you studying the Word of God? Are you living it out? Are you obeying what you're reading in the Scripture?

Are you praying it in? Are you allowing the Scripture to permeate your prayer life and the promises of God to fill your life with abundant hope and confidence and faith? The Word of God is so powerful. The Word of God is so persuasive.

The Word of God is so life-changing if you will allow the Scriptures to permeate your very soul. I want to mention to all of our listeners today that you can join us on our online community. This is an incredible world in which we live so that we can connect no matter where we live. We have people who visit us literally from all over the world on Twitter and you could talk with me and visit with me on Twitter at Jack N. Graham or you can go to our Facebook or our website here at JackGraham.org. We also want you to share your prayer request, how we can pray for you. There are people standing by at phones right now who will receive your call and your prayer request or you can just contact us on our website.

Again, that website is JackGraham.org. It would also be very encouraging to us if we could hear from you how PowerPoint has impacted your life, how God's Word is encouraging you through this ministry. If you can give a gift to support this ministry, of course that would be welcomed and I can tell you that we can get the gospel moving even faster through the opportunities God has given us right now if we have the resources to do it. So please know that we appreciate your gifts, we're thankful for your prayers and your participation with PowerPoint.

I look forward to being with you again the next time. And that is today's PowerPoint. Remember when you give a gift to PowerPoint, we'll send you a copy of the book Christmas Code as our thanks.

Call 1-800-795-4627, 1-800-795-4627. You can also text the word PowerPoint to 313131. And join us again next time as Dr. Graham brings a message about the relevance of the church today. That's next time on PowerPoint with Jack Graham. PowerPoint with Jack Graham is sponsored by PowerPoint Ministries.