God's Word - Part 1

SERMON TOPIC: God's Word - Part 1

Speaker: Ken Paynter

Language: ENGLISH

Date: 23 September 2018

Topic Groups: BIBLE, WILL OF GOD, APOLOGETICS

Sermon synopsis: The three most basic Christian truths:
1. God actually exists.
2. He has revealed Himself in a way that is understandable to people.
3. His revelation has been preserved for us in the Bible
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God’s Word Part1.

It is a great privilege to have the Bible, many died to get this message to you

.

The three most basic Christian truths

1.God actually exists.

2.He has revealed Himself in a way that is understandable to people.

3.His revelation has been preserved for us in the Bible

Satan always attacks God’s Word.

As To It’s Origin. It is not God-breathed. How could the Bible be inspired, it was written by men.

The Authenticity Of The Bible. Then the accusation is made that it has many mistakes and contradictions in it, and so you can pick and choose what you want to believe.

The Authority Of The Word Of God. So if the Bible was written by men, and is full of errors, how could it be the authority of my life?

The Power Of The Word Of God. When you doubt the origin, authenticity and authority of God’s Word it loses it’s life transforming power.

God’s Word.

When a person begins to doubt the Word of God then he becomes the centre of his world.

He becomes his own authority. He has no room for God to control any part of his life. We live in a society today in which Humanism is a rising religion because Satan has blinded men’s eyes to the Word of God.

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Peter and Scripture.

2 Peter 1:19-21.

We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things.

For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Paul and the Scripture.

11 Tim 3v16, 17

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.

Jesus and the Scriptures.

Luke 24:25-27. He said to them, How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

See NOTE 1

Jesus and the Scriptures.

Luke 24:44.

He said to them, This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

See NOTE 1

The authority of the Bible.

One of the reasons the Church is making so little impact is that the authority of the Bible is been undermined.

In some cases this is been done by making something else as valid as the Bible, like Church tradition. Jesus himself spoke of this..

Matt 15:6,9. Thus you nullify the Word of God for the sake of your tradition.

They worship me in vain, their teachings are but rules taught by men.

Liberal academics

There are so-called academics who take delight in trying to tear the Word of God apart.

The Apostle Paul warned of those who would turn from the truth. Acts 20:29-30.

I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise who will distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.

Satan’s strategy.

Satan uses different strategies on those who are professing Christians and believe that God’s Word is divinely inspired.

As he himself masquerades as an Angel of light, he places men in pulpits who twist the Truth and preach a False Gospel.

2 Corinthians11:3-15.

But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. .

Satan’s strategy.

2 Corinthians11:3-15 (continued)

I do not think I am in the least inferior to those super-apostles. I may indeed be untrained as a speaker, but I do have knowledge.....

For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness.

Their end will be what their actions deserve.

Experiences replace sound doctrine.

Some think they are so spiritual that instinctive ideas, inner feelings, intense emotional experiences and involuntary reactions are taken as “Revelations from God”

They then seek to interpret the Bible in the light of their emotions rather than use the Bible to Judge them.

Jeremiah 23:16-18 serves as a warning to them

Jeremiah 23:16-18.

This is what the Lord Almighty says: do not listen to what the Prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.

They keep saying to those who despise me, the Lord says you will have peace and to those who follow the stubbornness of their own hearts they say, no harm will come to you.

But which of them has stood in the council of the Lord to see or to hear his word?

Who has listened and heard his word?

Attacks and alternatives

Because of these attacks and supposed alternatives and additions like The book of Mormon, it is essential that Christians reaffirm the validity and authority of the Bible and get to know it.

1. Indestructibility.

We will look at some of the examples of those who tried to destroy The Bible.

2. The Consistency of the Bible.

The consistent message of the Bible throughout is “Through Jesus, God is restoring everything that sin destroyed”

Attacks and alternatives

3. Fulfilled Prophecy.

Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled over 300 prophecies from the Old Testament. Many of those could’ve been fulfilled only by Jesus and many are not things that a mere human could arrange. The fact that men wrote down hundreds of years ahead of time what was going to happen in the future, this shows God’s intervention.

4. Historical Reliability.

The Bible is historically reliable. We can be sure that we have the text of the Bible that was written down in the first century.

The indestructibility of Scripture.

There is a saying: “Homer must be handled with care.” The allusion, of course, is to the compositions of the blind poet of ancient Greece. The implication in the proverb is this: Homer’s works have been treasured and preserved cautiously for centuries. And yet, in spite of this meticulous care, only scant copies of Homer’s writings survive. There is no complete copy of the poet’s works prior to the thirteenth century A.D.—more than two thousand years after the Greek writer lived (Schrivener 1883, 4).

In contrast, the Bible, though viciously opposed and oppressed across several millennia, is reflected in thousands of Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, and even today continues to be the best-selling publication in the world.

The indestructibility of Scripture.

FOR 2600 YEARS ALL THE POWERS OF THIS WORLD HAVE COMBINED TO DESTROY THIS BOOK AND YET IT STILL REMAINS.

We know how the Communists and more recently Islam ruled countries have tried to get rid of the Bible and have heaped persecution on Christians, but let us look at a bit of history.

The indestructibility of the Bible

11 Kings 22:8-10

The Book of the Law was hidden during Manasseh's wicked reign, only to be re-discovered under God-fearing King Josiah

Jeremiah 36:1-3 & 22-23

Jehoiakim another King of Judah burnt the scroll Jeremiah had written on the instructions of God

The earlier OT books survived the captivity of Israel

2 Kings 15:29, 17:6

Beginning in 740 BC

2 Kings 24:14, 25:11

The later captivity of Judah

2 Kings 25:9-10

The destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC

Antiochus Epiphanes

During the period between the Old Testament and New Testament, Antiochus Epiphanes, the wicked Syrian tyrant, took Jerusalem by treachery in 165BC, desecrated the temple by sacrificing a pig on the alter, destroyed all the copies of the Scriptures (the whole of the Old Testament) he found and murdered all who had them.

Antiochus Epiphanes

Antiochus, known popularly as “the madman,” launched a bloody persecution against the Hebrew people. One aspect of his vendetta was an attempt to destroy copies of the Jewish Scriptures. An ancient document records this episode: And [the officials of Antiochus] rent in pieces the books of the law which they found, and set them on fire. And wheresoever was found with any a book of the covenant, and if any consented to the law, the king’s sentence delivered him to death (The Apocrypha, 1 Maccabees 1:56-57).

The historian Josephus comments upon this event:

And if there were any sacred book of the law found, it was destroyed, and those [Jews] with whom they were found miserably perished also (Antiquities of the Jews 12.5.4).

Jerusalem was captured by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BC. Shortly after, the temple was plundered by Crassus, again placing the Old Testament books in jeopardy.

Jerusalem was captured by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BC. Shortly after, the temple was plundered by Crassus, again placing the Old Testament books in jeopardy.

In AD70 the Roman general Titus destroyed Jerusalem and massacred it’s inhabitants. It’s fall could have resulted in the destruction of the Old Testament books as well as the earlier New Testament books

Crassus and Titus

Roman Emperor Diocletian.

Roman emperor Diocletian, known for persecution of Christians. He had no tolerance for Christianity, he called it a “cult”. Diocletian initiated the most terrible of all the persecutions of the early Church. In 302 A.D. he told his government “to tear down the churches to the foundations.

Roman Emperor Diocletian.

In AD302 Diocletian realised the Bible was the source of the Christians’ courage, so he ordered the burning of the Scriptures. Only 10 years later Constantine the Great, a professing Christian, ordered the writing of many copies of the Bible and encouraged everyone in the Roman Empire to read it.

John Wycliffe (1328-1384)

Following the fall of the Roman Empire, very few had access to the Bible but the stirrings that preceded the Reformation sparked renewed interest in it. However, those who tried to increase its availability were persecuted.

John Wycliffe made the first translation of the Bible into English. After his death, his bones were exhumed, burned and the ashes scattered in a river.

John Huss (1380-1414)

John Huss was burned alive in Bohemia because he proclaimed that the Bible was the final authority, and his ashes were thrown into the Rhine

William Tyndale (1494-1536)

William Tyndale translate the New Testament into English in 1526. It was banned, he was convicted of heresy and burned at the stake in Antwerp, Holland.

Queen Mary Tudor (1516-1558)

The English Queen Mary Tudor ordered that anyone possessing a bible should be burned. Thousands were martyred during her reign.

Five years after she launched the persecution, she was succeeded by Queen Elizabeth who ordered 130 editions of the Bible to be published.

The consistency of The Bible.

The Bible is not a single book, but actually

66 individual books,

written on 3 continents,

in 3 different languages,

over a period of approximately 1500 years,

by 40 authors who came from many walks of life (shepherds, kings, scholars, fishermen, prophets, a doctor, a military general, and a Pharisee)

One unified book from beginning to end without contradiction. This is evidence of The Bible being God’s Word.

CONTRASTING THE BIBLE AND THE KORAN

BIBLE

66 Books

40 Writers

Written in 3 languages

Written on 3 continents

Written over 1500 years

Many prophecies

Many miracles

An empty tomb in Jerusalem

Full atonement for sin

Love for enemies commanded

Produces liberty

KORAN

1 Book

1 Author

1 Language

1 Country

Over 23 years

No prophecies

No miracles

A grave in Medina

No atonement

Hatred for enemies

Slavery

The fulfilled Prophecies of The Bible.

There are 2,500 prophecies in Bible, 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter, no errors.

The fulfilled Prophecies of The Bible.

The chart showed 8 of the prophecies fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth (there are actually over 300 in total).

For example:

Place of birth (Micah 5:2)

Date of birth (Daniel 9:25)

Manner of birth (Isaiah 7:14)

Manner of death (Zechariah 12:10; Psalm 22:16 prophesied before the invention of crucifixion)

Burial (Isaiah 53:9)

The odds of 1 man fulfilling just 8 of these prophecies are (1 in 100 000 000 000 000 000) essentially impossible, which shows that God had to be involved…

The fulfilled Prophecies of The Bible.

(100 000 000 000 000 000) silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep.

Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state.

Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one.

What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man.

Historical Reliability of The Bible.

Reliability of a historical document is judged by a few things:

1. Does it contain eyewitness testimony?

The New Testament consists of 27 books that were written by authors who were either eyewitnesses to Jesus or interviewed eyewitnesses of Him

2. How early are the copies we have?

Any writing of history is judged by how close the writing is to the events it records. The New Testament events all occurred in the first century (0 – 100 A.D.) and all of the writings were written in the first century.

The Bible is a very old book.

Because the Bible comes to us fresh and applicable to the problems we currently face, we often fail to remember just how old it actually is.

The books of the New Testament were written between 55 and 96AD. Between AD100 and 200, they were collected and read in the Churches.

This can be seen , for example in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons (AD130-200) He mentions all the books of the New Testament except for 3 (Hebrews, 2 Peter & 3 John)

Historical Reliability of The Bible.

3. How many copies do we have? Historical documents are viewed as more reliable if they have more copies of them. The reason for this is that mass printing wasn’t invented until 1440 A.D., by Johannes Gutenberg. In fact the first book printed on the printing press was “The Bible”. Before that, scribes had to copy the writings by hand so that they could be distributed to other areas. The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work. There are over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian. (Wikipedia)

Historical Reliability of The Bible.

The Historical Jesus.

There are10 non-Christian writers who mention Jesus within 150 years of his life, by contrast, over the same 150 years, there are 9 non-Christian sources who mention Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus.

Jesus is actually mentioned by one more source than the Roman emperor at the time.

If you include the Christian sources, authors mentioning Jesus outnumber those mentioning Tiberius 43 to 10!

God’s Word.

The Bible best selling book of all time. the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year.”

The Bible most stolen book as well. In the United States alone, 50 Bibles are stolen every minute.

The Bible most read book of all time

The Bible is amazing and could not have survived all these years without God’s direct involvement

The Bible Society

According to 2008 statistics, the Bible, or parts of it, is currently available in 2454 of the approximately 6000 languages of the world.

Only 438 languages, however, have a complete Bible.

REGION/ CONTINENT

PORTION

TESTAMENTS

BIBLES

TOTAL

AFRICA

218

322

163

703

ASIA-PACIFIC

363

495

171

1029

EUROPE-MIDDLE EAST

112

39

61

212

AMERICAS

153

312

42

507

CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGES

2

0

1

3

TOTAL

848

1168

438

2454

God’s Word has been given to us to sanctify us.

Sanctification is been set apart for the Lord.

John 17:14.

I have given them your Word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you would take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one….

Sanctify them by the Truth; your Word is Truth.

Is God’s Word your delight?

Psalm 1:1-2.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from the NIV:

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations taken from the NASB:

New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations taken from the ESV:

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.




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