Why Bother with the Bible? (Part 3 of 6)

Music playing... To Timothy chapter 3 and verse 14, Continue in what you've learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Amen. Well, we set ourselves the task last time of addressing a very simple and yet straightforward question—namely, why bother with the Bible? Why bother with the Bible? At the heart of all that we discovered last time, we tried to nail down one essential sentence, which was quite straightforwardly, in the Bible, God was and is speaking to us. During the week, I came across a quote from J. C. Ryle, the one-time bishop of Liverpool's Practical Religion, in which he writes as follows, When you read the Bible, you're not reading the self-taught compositions of poor, imperfect men like yourself, but the words of the Eternal God. When you hear it, you are not listening to the erring opinions of short-lived mortals but to the unchanging mind of the King of Kings. The men who were employed to indict the Bible spoke not of themselves. They spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. All other books in the world, however good and useful in their way, are more or less defective.

The more you look at them, the more you see their defects and blemishes. The Bible alone is absolutely perfect. From beginning to end, it is the Word of God. Now, that, of course, is the emphasis of Paul to Timothy here, a young man pastoring in the face of confusion within the church and compromise outside of the church. And Paul writes to him to urge him on to where he had begun his spiritual journey. And in the course of that, in verse 16, he tells Timothy that all Scripture is God-breathed. Now, the NIV translates theopneustos, God-breathed.

It translates it quite literally—two Greek words put together to form a word, the word theos for God and pneuma, the word for spirit or for breath. And the picture, as we saw last time, is not of the existence of writings into which God-breathed inspiration. Indeed, the word inspiration is not as good a word as perhaps expiration would be—the idea of the breathing out of God through human instrumentality providing us with the Scriptures themselves. The word inspired actually comes from the Latin Vulgate translation divinitus inspirata, and from that we took inspired and put it in our English version.

But the NIV helps us here with this notion of God-breathed. And you will notice that the subject of inspiration is not the human author. We're familiar with talking about a poet being inspired or a musician being inspired or somebody like Van Gogh being inspired.

That is not the picture here. The inspiration is not that of the author. But what is inspired is the Scripture itself. God breathed out the Scriptures. And it is because of this that the Scriptures, by means of their inspiration, are completely inspired independent of how we may feel about them. It is not that the Scripture becomes inspired when we start to feel properly about it—that somehow or another, when we encounter it in an existential way, it becomes something that prior to that it was not. Oh yes, there are those who teach that, and you may have come from a congregation in which, before the Scriptures were read, if you were paying particular attention, you would have become alert to one of the prepositions. And the individual might have stood and said, Now, I want you to listen for the Word of God. Here you will find people saying, Now let us listen to the Word of God. What is the distinction? The distinction is the belief that the Scriptures are the Word of God. They do not become the Word of God to us by some kind of existential response. And furthermore, we noted, as Paul tells us here, that it is not just parts of the Scriptures that are God-breathed, but all Scripture is breathed out by God.

It is all equally authoritative. That doesn't mean that all parts are equally interesting. Not everybody finds every part as interesting as another. And some may say, I find it quite fascinating to read the book of Ezekiel. And somebody else says, Well, I find it really tortuous reading the book of Ezekiel. I find such-and-such a passage stimulating. It's elevating.

It's moving. Well, I understand that the Gospel of John may appear to us to be very stirring. The book of Esther may appear to us to be rather dull.

John's Gospel may actually be more stimulating than Esther, but it is not more inspired than Esther. All Scripture is breathed out by God. And he has given for us these sixty-six books—a library, a compendium—twenty-seven of them after Jesus and thirty-nine of them before Jesus, giving us the sixty-six books that make up the library, which is in between the leather covers of my Bible here. Immediately on Sunday, I was bombarded by a number of questions concerning what we considered, not least of all the issue of the Apocrypha.

Well, what about the fact that other Bibles—the Roman Catholic Bible, the Orthodox Church, Greek, and Russian—have lots of other books in them that we do not have? What are you going to say about that? I was asked. Well, very little is my answer, and this is the little that I'm going to say.

The short layman's answer is very straightforward, and it is this. And you must, since you're sensible people, check the evidence on your own. But there is actually no evidence—there is no evidence—that other books were ever regarded as being canonical, that these other books were ever regarded as being part of the canon or the list of the sixty-six books of the Bible. Nowhere have I found a more helpful statement regarding this than in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which in its section on Scripture I commend to you. It points out its observations regarding the Apocrypha. It says, first of all, the books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings. In other words, the books of the Apocrypha are no more helpful to us than Shakespeare or Cicero or the commentaries of Calvin. That's not to say these things aren't helpful, but they have no more sanction to them than that.

And then, extrapolating from that, I read this statement to you, which I hope you'll find helpful. The word Apocrypha, which insolently means anything hidden, has been applied to certain ancient writings whose authorship is not manifest and for which unfounded claims have been set up for a place in the canon, arguing for their existence in the Bible. Some of these have been associated with the Old and some with the New Testament. In this section of the Confession, however, the name is applied principally to those spurious Scriptures for which a place is claimed in the Old Testament canon by the Roman church. And then it lists them—Tobbit, Wisdom, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the two books of Maccabees.

It also points out that they put a prefix to the book of Daniel, which is called the history of Susanna, the insert in the third chapter, the song of the three children, and they add to the end of the book of Daniel the history of Bell and the dragon. Now, these things are part and parcel of the apocryphal writings. The Confession goes on to say that these books have no right to a place in the canon is proved by the following facts. One, they never formed a part of the Hebrew Scriptures. They have always been rejected by the Jews, to whose guardianship the Old Testament Scriptures were committed. Two, none of them were ever quoted by Christ or the apostles. Three, they were never embraced in the list of canonical books by the early church fathers, and even in the Roman church their authority was not accepted by the most learned and candid men until after it was made an article of faith by the Council of Trent in the late sixteenth century.

It's very, very important. Because people will come to you and they will say, you know, these books were authoritatively in the Bible, and you folks at the Reformation, ala Martin Luther and the rest, you went in there and removed them. The fact is, they were never regarded in that way until the Council of Trent baptized them into orthodoxy late in the sixteenth century. And fourthly, the internal evidence presented by their contents disproves their claims. None of them make any claim to inspiration, while the best of them disclaim it.

Some of them consist of childish fables and inculcate bad morals. Now, that's all I want to say concerning the Apocrypha. I want to commend to you the Westminster Confession. The Confession was put together by the divines in Westminster in the seventeenth century. In the middle of the seventeenth century, they actually presented it to Parliament on the third of December 1646.

It's amazing to think about that historically, isn't it? That you have these theologians, these biblical scholars, presenting to the houses of Parliament, to the very seat of government, the theological framework for an understanding of the Bible. The Parliament sits in session, like Congress would do, and they sit and they discuss the nature of all of these theological principles. Parliament, subsequent to that, in December of 1646, sent it back to the assembly of the divines, asking them, interestingly, to provide more scriptural proofs for their points.

And so they reconvened, put more scriptural references in the document, and then it was fully reported and finished with full scriptural proof, and then endorsed by Parliament on the twenty-ninth of April 1647. Along with that, let me commend to you the Foundations of the Christian Faith by the late James Boyce. The opening four or five chapters on the doctrine of Scripture will reward your careful attention, as will the section in Know the Truth by Dr. Bruce Milne, a book that I have come to commend warmly and to use with great frequency.

It's a vast subject, and therefore we must restrain ourselves and get to the matter at hand and return to the text from which we've read. Our question has to do, now, with not what is the Bible but has to do with what is the Bible for. What is the Bible for?

Now, here we have essentially two answers that Paul chooses to give to Timothy at this point. Why should anybody bother with the Bible? Well, first of all, there at the end of verse 15, because it is through the holy Scriptures, the hiaragramata, the holy writings, that a man or a woman is made wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. And secondly, in verse 17, because it is by means of these same holy Scriptures that the man or woman of God can be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Taking it down a couple of notches, it shows us how to be saved, and it shows us how to live when we have been saved. Incidentally, that's what gives me and my colleagues complete freedom in teaching the Bible in the way that we do, verse by verse and chapter by chapter and book by book. Some are almost paralyzed in their approach to teaching the Bible, because they recognize that there is a great diversity of people listening. Some of them have no idea about the Bible at all. Some are unchurched and unlearned and disinterested, whereas others have been around for a while.

What are we to do? And they have conferences and sit together and discuss, you know, telling people when they should come and how they should listen, and then come in the evening if you want to learn the Bible properly, come in the morning if you want just to hear about Jesus, and so on. I applaud their endeavor to be very, very purposeful. But I fear no such tyranny and feel no such need.

Why? Because of what I learn here. That Paul says to Timothy, if you just teach the Bible, two things will happen. People will be saved, and the people who are saved will learn what it means to be saved. And you really don't need to bother much beyond that, provided you are faithfully, Timothy, speaking into a paganized culture and into a church that represents a diversity of perspectives. So we let the Scriptures speak to save and to equip. Now, by deduction, then each of you should be sitting here now saying to yourself, that is, if you're compass meant us at all, if you're even listening, then by deduction it is very clear. If what this character is saying is accurate, then I, as an individual this morning, in listening to the Bible being taught, either need to learn what it means to be saved—and therefore, I'm asking the question, have I been saved?—or I find myself asking the question, am I learning what it means to live as a saved person?

Those are the only two options. The Scriptures are given to us to make men and women wise for salvation and to equip them, then, with everything that goes along with what it means to be saved. Well then, listen carefully, won't you? What Paul is doing in this little section is simply reminding Timothy of the impact that the Word of God has had upon his life and upon his family. And he's had a wonderful heritage, hasn't he? A godly grandmother and a godly mom. The two of them had a wonderful impact on Timothy's young life, the way that many of you are having today. I applaud all godly grannies, and I applaud all godly moms, and commend to you the work of the gospel, for at your knee and by your tutelage you are instilling in those who are under your care values, principles, discoveries, about the Bible and about who Jesus is and why he came, which will cause them in time under God to arise and bless you and to bless and to revere your memory, even as I revere the memory of my own mother and my own grandmother as I speak to you.

How can I quantify what their prayers have meant? How can I understand what their nurturing in the gospel has meant? How can I ever repay the debt I owe to them who taught the Bible to me and under whose tutelage I became convinced? Yes, there were pastors, and yes, there was my father, and yes, there were multiple influences, but I have a sneaking suspicion that others along with me this morning enjoy this great and wonderful benefit and never minimize it.

And even when your children run away and when they tell you that they have no interest in it and they hate coming to the service and they don't like their teacher and all those other things, know that at least one rapt scallion goes out before them—namely, myself. I know by personal testimony those from whom I learned the Scriptures and have become convinced of these things. I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing men of sin, revealing Jesus through the Word and creating faith in him, but I know whom I have believed, and I'm committed to that which he has made available to me against the day. And that was Timothy's experience.

The place of his mind in thinking. The key is inserted, the key of the mind inserted in the lock of Scripture, opening the doorway to salvation. The Bible is a Bible under which we come.

Jim Packer years ago wrote a wonderful little book—I pulled it off my shelves again this week—Under God's Word. But he makes the point, the Bible is not primarily a book for the speculative thinker, the scientific investigator, or the literary critic. But it is rather for the individual who, having learned from the world around him and from his own heart something of God and of his own need, now seeks to know God and to find salvation.

Now, why would that be the case? Well, because the Scriptures have been given to make us wise for salvation. You'll notice it's not the Bible that saves us. It's the Bible that makes us wise so that we might be saved. Read the Acts of the Apostles, and you discover that when the apostles begin to proclaim the good news on the Jerusalem streets and beyond, what they're essentially doing is simply taking the Old Testament Scriptures and saying, This is him!

That this Messiah who was to come has actually come in the person of Jesus. And then the great declarative statement of Peter following Pentecost and following the healing at the gate beautifully says, Salvation is found in no one else, for there's no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. The Scripture has been given to educate us, to tell us what we won't get anywhere else.

Let me quote the confession for the last time this morning. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of his will, which is necessary, unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord in various ways and at different times, quoting Hebrews 1, to reveal himself and to declare that his will unto his church, and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan of the world, to commit the same holy unto writing, which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary, these former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.

Now, if that's a bit of an earful, they then work it out in more bite-sized chunks. But actually, it occurred to me that Psalm 19 says this very thing, doesn't it? Where does it begin? The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.

There is no speech or language where this voice is not heard. You can know enough about God to be rendered without excuse. All of creation points to the Creator and leaves us without any excuse.

You're listening to Alistair Begg, and this is Truth for Life. We've heard today that we know God exists through his creation, but it's the Bible that is God's chosen tool to lead us to salvation, to instruct us in how we're to live as followers of Jesus. God's word provides all we need to know for life and godliness.

That's why we teach the scriptures every day on this program, so unbelievers will become committed followers of Christ, and believers will be encouraged to live out their faith. If you don't have a Bible that helps you dive deeper into God's word, or if you know someone who could benefit by receiving a Bible as a gift, let me encourage you to purchase the ESV Study Bible that's available at Truth for Life today. This is a complete study Bible. It includes thousands of notes, hundreds of full color maps and illustrations.

It comes with a black leather cover, and best of all, it's available to you today for our cost of only $25, and the shipping is free. You can view the Bible and purchase it online at truthforlife.org slash features. While you're on our website, be sure to look for our book recommendation. It's a book called Spurgeon on the Power of Scripture. If you're not familiar with Charles Spurgeon, he's a well-known preacher from the 19th century. He's often referred to as the Prince of Preachers because his sermons were so powerful. He preached God's word with great passion, and he's influenced many pastors throughout history, including Alistair. Request your copy of the book Spurgeon on the Power of Scripture when you donate to support the teaching you hear on Truth for Life. Visit our website truthforlife.org slash donate or tap the book image in the Truth for Life app.

I'm Bob Lapine. The heavens declare the glory of God, and that leaves every one of us without excuse. Join us tomorrow to find out why we'd be lost without the Bible. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.