The Inspiration of the Bible
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We have pointed out that the apostle Paul, in Romans chapter 15, calls upon spiritually mature, super-grace level Christians to help the spiritually immature believers to grow up spiritually. This edification of the weak Christian is the product of teaching him the Word of God. God has provided a grace system of perception for grasping spiritual phenomena. This system works apart from the level of your personal IQ. The higher IQ you have does not mean that you have a greater capacity for a deeper walk with God. IQ does not come into the picture of learning spiritual truth and of developing as a spiritual Christian. It has only to do with your willingness to be taught the Word. There is no limit then to the extent to which a Christian can go into the deep things of the mind of God through Bible doctrine and the filling of the Holy Spirit.

The principle of pleasing others for their spiritual benefit was, of course, exemplified by the Lord Jesus Himself. Here was a Man who lived a sinless life in maximum unbroken fellowship with God the Father. Yet he was abused in various ways by the religious leaders of his day, all of whom lacked spiritual discernment, and certainly spiritual maturity. Yet, Jesus Christ went about doing good to those who despised and misrepresented Him. Thus, He is an example for all believers of dealing in grace with those who are spiritually weak. Christians who have eyes only for themselves, are not going to be interested in looking upon the spiritual needs of other believers. Yet that is the duty, and that is the responsibility. And when you become a spiritually mature Christian, then your eyes get off of yourself, and they do turn to the needs of others. The strong Christian then is to pattern himself after Jesus Christ, who, in the midst of doctrinal ignorance which surrounded Him, tried to correct that blackness (that darkness) with Scripture for any who would listen to Him.

Jesus Christ did not Please Himself

However, the Lord Jesus was motivated by the need for salvation of lost humanity. And He knew that if He did not perform the task of being the sinless Lamb of God, to justify God's taking sinners into heaven, and to satisfy the justice of God, there would be no hope for humanity. So, in John 14:6, Jesus explained what motivated Him to do what He wasn't all that eager to take upon Himself: "Jesus said unto him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me." You can never come into heaven, through Buddha; you can never come into heaven through Mohammad; and, you can never come into heaven through Joseph Smith. If you follow their teachings, you will end up in the lake of fire. You cannot even come into heaven through liberal Christianity, or through corrupted Christianity, such as you find in Roman Catholicism. If you follow those paths, you will end up in the lake of fire.

Jesus knew that He was the only one who could solve the problem. It was either through Him, or it was not at all. So, He bore the suffering. He bore the shame on the cross to please His Father. And He showed that you must take seriously the demand of Almighty God for absolute righteousness if you want to come into heaven. Without absolute righteousness, you are not justified in the eyes of God, and you won't make it. What Christ did proved a perfect justice of God toward sin. God does not ignore sin. For sin, there must be a penalty.

How do we know this? Because the Bible tells us so. You have to start with some base of authority. You have to decide that you're going to either look inside yourself, and hope that you're going to find the answers there, or are you going to look around society among you, and see what other people think, or you're going to reach out for some kind of an authoritative written basis upon which to base your beliefs, and to commit your own eternity. We are saying that only the Bible qualifies to have that kind of total confidence.

"As it is Written"

So Paul says, "It is written." Naturally, he is not referring here to the New Testament, which wasn't written at this time completely, but he is referring to the Old Testament Scriptures. It is in the perfect tense, which means that it was written in the past, over the centuries, by various prophets. And now, what they wrote has come down to the present, to Paul's day. And the Bible was written by these men through the guidance of God. So, it's in the passive voice. These men did not write the Bible on their own. That's the answer. Some would say, "Well, why should we believe the Bible? After all, men sat down and wrote that. What's the difference between that, and Joseph Smith, and Buddha, and Muhammad?" Well, there's a great deal of difference by the sheer fact that the person of Jesus Christ, if He is who He claimed to be, the sinless Son of God, made very clear that the Old Testament Scriptures, and they alone, are the source of information from God, because they alone are inspired. They alone are the product of the Holy Spirit. And this same quality was then applied later to the New Testament.

What Paul is referring to here is a quotation then in Psalm 69:9, where he says, "It is written," and he quotes this statement in the psalm – a song written by King David: "The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on Me." The word "reproaches" is the Greek word "oneidismos." "Oneidismos" means "insults." Here, it refers to the sins of mankind against the absolute righteousness of God and His moral laws in Scripture. Please remember that sin is an insult to God. Sin is always an insult to God. If the Bible says, "Don't do something," and you proceed to do it, you have insulted God. And it's not easy to stand, and eyeball-to-eyeball, face a human being, and say insulting things to him. We recoil from doing that. And yet, it is very easy for human beings to insult God by doing exactly the thing about which the Bible says, "Don't do this," and they do this, and therefore it is sin.

So, what this psalm is referring to is this horrendous, monstrous pile of in over the centuries against a holy and righteous God, and it's called "insults." It expresses, indeed, the hatred of unbelievers against the authority of God. And it refers to the evil which sinners do. Furthermore, he says, "Not only the insults did Christ take upon Himself, but He also indicated that He took upon Himself all those who reproached Christ (those who went about insulting Him). And the idea here is those who taunted Him – their insults against God the Father fell upon . . . And the word "fell" is "epipto." This word means "to fall upon." The idea is emphatic: "It fell upon, meaning with big impact. And He says, "It fell upon Me." And, here again, in the Greek language, the word Me is written out separately for emphasis. It's not just part of the verb: "The insults and those who insulted you – all of their guilt and all of their moral misdemeanors fell upon Me" (upon Jesus Christ.)

Now, historically, what you have in Psalm 69 is King David speaking to God the Father in terms of his own historical experience. When David says, "The insults of those who insulted you, My God, fell upon me," he is speaking about himself personally. In David's own experience, he bore the insults of people who hated David, because he represented the righteousness of God.

So, the zeal that David had here for God was represented by his zeal toward God's temple, as you'll see if you look that up in Psalm 69. And God's temple represented God's righteousness. So, David was very zealous for the temple of God, and the righteousness it represented. For his devotion to this righteousness of God, David was hated.

Now, Psalm 69 also, as psalms often do, has a secondary application down the centuries. And we call this particular psalm one of those Messianic psalms because it has a twofold application. It applied to David's historical situation, and the enemies who hated him, because he was true to the holiness of God. And then the apostle Paul, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, takes that same verse and tells us that it also had a long-range implication (a meaning) applied to Jesus Christ, who was in David's position, again, of bearing the insults against Almighty God upon himself as a human being. It foreshadows Jesus Christ speaking the same principles centuries later.

So, what Paul is saying is that Jesus Christ is telling God the Father of His zeal for God's temple and God's righteousness. His zeal and love for God leads Jesus Christ to take on Himself the insults of the sins of mankind against the Father. We can understand this somewhat in human terms. If somebody is your very good friend, and somebody comes up to you and badmouths and insults this friend, if you are true and loyal friend, you will not take that kindly. You will take the insult of your friend as the insult of you, and you may have some words of rebuke back to the individual for insulting your friend to whom you bear a loyalty.

Jesus Christ said, "My father is My friend. I am totally loyal to Him. And when somebody badmouths My Father, I take it as a personal affront. And I take that insult upon Myself." When somebody sins, they have sinned against My Father, and I consider that an insult – for sin is an insult, and I take that as an insult to me. These insulting sinners would receive the judgment of God's wrath, therefore, unless somebody else bore that penalty of wrath for them, because God's justice is not going to let anybody insult him. And Jesus Christ took upon Himself the impact of those insults because He did not want all of us sinners to take it on ourselves. And that's the point of this verse. Jesus took our insults and paid the penalty for them. He chose the penalty of death on the cross for the insults of mankind toward God, so that they would be forgiven, and they themselves, then, would not be obligated to personally pay for those insults. The penalty for insulting God is death.

In Matthew 26:52, Jesus points this out: "Then Jesus said to him (to Peter), 'Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than 12 legions of angels?'" A legion was about 6,000 men. You multiply that by 12, and Jesus says, "I can call on that many angels." And His point was here: "I'm not obliged, Peter, to do this. You don't have to get your sword out here to protect Me from these men who are taking Me off to crucifixion. If I wanted to resist them, I'd call down angels that would turn these people into grease spots immediately. But I choose to do this. I'm taking the insults against My Father on Myself, and I'm taking the responsibility for the insults of mankind, and I will pay the price for them.

So, what we have here is indeed the example of Christ looking away from Himself, from His own desires, and He wholeheartedly identifies Himself with mankind's need for atonement. He pointed this out in Mark 10:45: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life for ransom for many." Now, had Jesus Christ chosen not to serve God, and have chosen instead to please Himself, then we all would be now doomed to the lake of fire.

So, Jesus is the Christian's example of concern for the spiritual needs of others ahead of our own interests at some point in time. He took this attitude because it pleased His Heavenly Father. So, all mankind is blessed with atonement for sin because of this attitude on the part of Jesus Christ. And the point that the apostle Paul is making is that many human beings, within the realm of your association, will also be blessed indeed for eternity with your attitude of investing your life for their concerns and their needs, rather than just your own.

In Matthew 26:39, we read, "And He went a little beyond them (Peter, James, and John), and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, 'My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me, and yet not as I will, but as You will.'" In verse 42, it says, "And He went away again the second time and prayed, saying, 'My father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done." And here, Christ in his humanity was now recoiling from what He knew was going to happen the next day as He came under the authority of the Romans, and the Jewish leaders instigating His death. Yet the point was that He chose to take the penalty. The insults of the Father He bore against Himself. If the sinless Son of God suffered so justly for others, is it too much to ask those of you who are strong Christians, to inconvenience yourself a little bit for those who are weak? Should a strong Christian insist on his right in trivialities to the spiritual injury of the weak brother for whom Christ bore so much? The Lord Jesus Christ bore infinitely more for others than any strong Christian is ever asked to bear for his weak brother in Christ?

So, the zeal of the mature Christian for God's righteousness, and for His approval, will move him to sacrifice like Jesus Christ did for the well-being of others. It was the Lord who found great satisfaction in living for the blessing of others, and not just for His own blessing. In God's genuine service, suffering, after all, is only a blessing, while self-pleasing is really a curse. But the world has a hatred toward the members of the body of Christ, the church. And when the world expresses the hatred toward you, which it will, you must remember that it is really expressing the hatred toward the Lord. You are simply His representative.

So, the Lord Jesus Christ is the believer's role model. Notice a few examples. It is the Word of God that calls upon us, because Christ is our role model, that we should imitate Him. 1 Corinthians 11:1 says, "Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ." Here, the apostle Paul says, "I imitate Jesus Christ. If you imitate me, you will be imitating Christ.

2 Corinthians 8:9 tells us that Jesus Christ gave up his personal benefits for the spiritual enrichment of others: "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ – that though He was rich, yet for your sake, He became poor, that you, through His poverty, might become rich.

The role model of Jesus Christ also is exemplified in the fact that He sacrificed Himself for sinners in their spiritual need. Ephesians 5:1-2: "Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us – an offering and a sacrifice to God for a fragrant aroma."

Jesus Christ demonstrated a willingness to humble Himself to serve those who had personal spiritual needs. This is indicated in Philippians 2:5-8: "Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. But He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a Man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross."

Jesus Christ is, furthermore, an example in terms of forgiving those who are guilty of abusing us. In Colossians 3:13, we read, "Bearing with one another, and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you." And I want you to notice that that verse does not speak about any foolish, nonsensical procedure such that you must go up to a person and ask them to forgive you. That is a psychological gimmick which is popular among some Bible teachers. But the Word of God says, "When somebody offends you, you forgive him." Why do you do that? If you have a legitimate complaint against somebody, don't hold a grudge, but forget it. Pass it on to the Lord. Why should you do that? Because that's what Christ did for you. Before you ever came around and said, "I'd like to go to heaven, Jesus Christ had already forgiven your sins. And what you did was receive what he already prepared. That is a very important Scripture. Do not be trapped into that nonsense of running around, telling people what you have done, and what you thought about them, in order to get their forgiveness, so that you can be accepted by the Lord. That isn't the way it's done. Your confession goes to the Father. Against Him alone is your sin.

Matthew 11:29 adds this: Jesus had a gentle and humble spirit which brought rest to others: "Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me. For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls."

Jesus is also our example in terms of fulfilling our particular divine mission in life as He fulfilled His. Matthew 16:24: "But then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, let Him deny Himself; take up his cross; and, follow Me." Your cross is your particular mission of service in your life.

Finally, Jesus is our example (our role model) in terms of the fact that He desired to serve others, and not to be served Himself. Matthew 20:27-28: "And whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." I suspect that the Lord Jesus Christ, while appreciating praise and gratitude in His humanity, would have been a little uncomfortable with it. And the true, mature servant of God, when he finds himself in the place where people are praising him, and thanking him, and expressing appreciation, always feels a little uncomfortable with it, because he knows that what has been done has been the product of God the Holy Spirit working through him. And the praise and the thanksgiving really should go to God. But we are grateful for the instruments, and we hope that the instruments will understand that what we are grateful for in their service is what God has been permitted to do through them. So, the Lord Jesus Christ Paul says, is the great, great example.

It is the Lord Jesus Christ, furthermore, that taught that a person becomes great by being God's servant to others. In Mark 10:42-44, this is pointed out: "And calling them (His disciples) to Himself, Jesus said to them, 'You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the gentiles lorded over them, and their great men exercised authority over them. But it is not so among you. But whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave to all.'" The same principle is stressed again. The person who wants to be great is the person who is the servant.

Jesus Christ is also our role model in the fact that he endured the horrible agonies of the cross in exchange for ruling with the Father and his royal family of Christians. He chose to go with the people of God. So many times, the Christian chooses to go with the people of the world. So many times, the Christian chooses to act like the people of Satan's realm.

In Hebrews 12:2, we read, "Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Yes, people made fools of Him. People ridiculed Him. People insulted him. But he passed that over. And now He sits in the honored position at the right hand of the throne of God. The same is open to all of us.

One more: Jesus Christ is our role model in the fact that He left all believers an example of godly suffering for the blessing of the weak. 1 Peter 2:21 says, "For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps."

So, Paul's quotation of Psalm 69:9, when you match this up to what the New Testament records about Jesus Christ, is indeed well-placed: The insults of those who insulted you, My Heavenly Father, with their sins, I chose to take upon Myself so that I could release them from the consequences of their acts." In verse 4, he goes on to give another explanation of what he has just said. It begins with the word "For:" "For whatever was written in earlier times." The word "for" is here referring back to what he has just referred to in Psalm 69:9. "Whatever" refers to the content of the Old Testament. And here you have this term "written," but it's in a different form this time. They have a preposition before it: "pro," which means "before," and then "grapho," means to write. "Prographo" means indeed something that has been written before. And Paul is referring to something written before the church age; namely, the Old Testament Scriptures. And again, this is something that was the product of God through selected men. So, therefore it is passive voice. It is something that God produced.

The Old and New Testaments

Later on, the Holy Spirit added the New Testament as the record of the fulfillment of much of the Old Testament revelation, and also to give information about the new church body in Christ. Both the Old and New Testaments are produced by a perfect God. Therefore, they were originally (in the original manuscripts) without any error, and they have been preserved by God in that inerrant condition through copies which have come down to us. When a writer of the Old Testament finished a book, he did not have to go back two months later and make corrections in what he had written. When a writer of a New Testament epistles had written one book, he did not have to go back some time later and make corrections in subsequent copies of mistakes that he had incorporated in the original writing. That's what we're saying. The Bible is the only religious book in the world that bears this stamp of perfection.

The Book of Mormon

When the first edition of the Book of Mormon came out, the Mormons started reading it, and they found that Joseph Smith had contradicted something he had said previously in the book, or that he had characters who did something, and then he referred to that same event, and he gave the guy a different name. And then they decided which name they wanted to keep, and they picked one of the names and threw the other one out. I have never seen God so sloppy as He was when he wrote the Book of Mormon. No thoughtful person will seriously take a book that has thousands of errors in it, and say that it is another testament of Jesus Christ.

Joseph Smith was a con man who made up his own Scriptures, and because he was a human being, limited by his fallibility, he could not make it inerrant like the Old and New Testaments. It was inevitable that he should make a mistake in it. But Joseph Smith is a con man. And like all con men, he expected that he'd be off the scene before the con was discovered – whether it's a financial con man, or an emotional con man, or whatever. Con men always operate on the fact that they're going to move in fast; make the kill; and, then be gone before people discover what's happened. That is the technique of con men. And Joseph Smith anticipated that he'd be long gone before anybody ever caught on to what he was doing. So, he could make statements like the fact that the moon is inhabited by people who look green and wear Quaker clothing, because he never expected anybody to get up there to be able to contradict him. So, the Book of Mormon is not the Word of God.

The Koran

However, when you come to the Bible, the Bible writers make no apologies for their claims to be guided by God the Holy Spirit in the creation of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. The Bible authors, under the inspiration and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, wrote a perfectly true Scripture.

The Bible is Inspired by God

So, the New Testament writers and believers placed their books on an equal level of inspiration with the Old Testament. So, the New Testament is as infallible, and as truly the Word of God, as the Old Testament. Because of the guidance of the control of the Holy Spirit, fallible men were able to receive infallible information, and record it with total accuracy. God Himself breathed to the human authors the contents of their books. And such Scripture, then: "Is valuable for doctrine; for reproof of human viewpoint; for correction of false doctrine; and, for training and experience for righteousness." 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that.

The effect of Bible doctrine is to bring a believer to spiritual maturity so that he can produce divine good work service.

The other verse I remind you of is in 2 Peter 1:21, which tells us: "No prophecy (this is a type of revelation of Scripture) was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." Here, the emphasis is again that the Bible authors receive their content from God, but it takes one more step. It says that when they wrote it down God, the Holy Spirit was there, seeing to it that they didn't put it down the wrong way. Every word was right, and the total content was total truth. What the Bible authors wrote (this verse is telling us) was not made up by themselves, as was the case with Joseph Smith.

2 Peter 1:16-18 make that very clear – that these men were not giving their own cunningly devised fables. But God selected certain godly men. They wrote down the information that God gave them. And the inerrancy of Scripture is the great proof that it is the Word of God. No other religious book, claiming to be Scripture, is totally free of error.

People who are enslaved to the old sin nature, however, deny the infallibility of Scripture. They do this in order to justify their own violations of the Word of God. If you find someone who, in some respects, is doing exactly what the Bible says, "Don't do," that person is going to have some reservations about inerrancy of Scripture, because he wants to justify his own wrongdoing. The spiritually blinded unbeliever, or the carnal Christian, cannot accept inerrancy of the Bible. That's a supernatural act, and they don't like that. Bible prophecy has never yet proven to be false.

There are some prophecies in the Book of Mormon (some prophecies that Joseph Smith made), and they have proven to be totally false. The Lord Jesus Christ, you remember, accepted the Old Testament Scriptures as the infallible and true Word of God, and in John 10:35, He says, "The Scriptures cannot be broken." That means that it's absolute truth. Human reason contaminated by the sin nature cannot determine spiritual truth on its own. We have to get our information from God Himself, or we don't know that we have the real truth.

Verbal Plenary Inspiration

So, the Bible cannot be dismissed by man because its laws are eternal, and what it reveals is going to be fulfilled. In Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus said, "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the prophets (referring to the Old Testament Scriptures). I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law until all is accomplished. It is clear in the teachings of Jesus Christ that there is no mistake in the Bible. Everything it says is going to be fulfilled.

So, it is the Word of God, which is the foundation of true Christianity, and in fact of Western civilization. And those who reject the divine authority of the Bible now reject Christianity, and destroy the blessings and the freedom of Western civilization. And that's what is happening in our day. People who have rejected the moral code of the Word of God are destroying biblical Christianity, and they're destroying the freedoms of Western civilization.

You may have seen on TV this morning a short interview with a previous surgeon general, Everett Koop, who reported that in a few years down the line, probably near the end of this decade, there will be 50 million people in the world suffering with AIDS. The question placed was: what can we do about getting a cure? How soon? And his response was, "It's not even in sight." So, we are being told things by the government, and by the medical world, that they're on breakthroughs here, and they're holding here, and making progress here. Can you imagine what 50 million human beings suffering with AIDS, a few years down the line here (say, ten years) is going to mean to this world?

The Rapture

So, when we turn our backs upon the Bible, and its moral code, and its rules for human relationships, you've got nothing. And people insist on rearing their children as animals. The whole system of Planned Parenthood is taking a human being, and dealing with the realm of sexuality as if he were an animal – some barnyard animal. The same principles that you would apply to a dog or a cow are the principles that are applied in public school classrooms to the teaching of human sexuality – totally devoid of biblical guidelines, and of the fact that human beings are made in the image of God. And they are different from animals.

Self-Deification

Charismatics

If you've been watching "Day of Discovery," which comes on at 8 o'clock on Sunday mornings, they've had a splendid series on the tongues movement, and on the healing concept, and the enormity of the deception that has no relationship to the Word of God at all. And after you've listened to a program like that, with its very clear presentation, you just have to shake your head and wonder how Satan can so successfully deceive so many sincere Christians. But they're all in that weak, uninformed, backward category of human beings who are going to squeak into heaven, and be poor hound dogs for the rest of eternity. Without the guidance of doctrine, you will create your own religious ideas, and the sin nature will totally contaminate them, far from what God has taught in His Word.

Also, remember that one favorite way of dismissing what God teaches in the Bible is to say that one is taking a passage out of context, and so misrepresenting it. Somebody told me recently that my marriage ceremony, with all that it says about the authority of the husband and the subjection of the wife, is taken out of biblical context. And you can even say, "Well, I just read the Bible. What do you think it means?" And they'll say, "Well, I don't know, but you're taking it out of context, which means, "You're taking it out of what I want you to say. You're taking it out of what I want to think about this thing, and how I feel about it, and the way I would like it to be."

Most ministers in pulpits today, you should be aware, do not believe that the Bible is the inherent Word of God. They believe it is a product of men sincere with their religious experiences. Well, when the minister in the pulpit does not understand that the Bible is made by a perfect God, and so it is a perfect book, you can see how the grace system of perception, by which a person goes into spiritual maturity, is completely frustrated. And that's why you have these weak and puny Christians in churches all around us.

So, when the apostle Paul wants to prove a spiritual point, he just quotes the Bible, because once you have quoted the Bible, and you've interpreted by the HICEE technique, you do have indeed the mind of God. In Romans 15:4, Paul says, "For whatever was written in earlier times (the Old Testament Scriptures) were written (and he adds one very important reason for it to be written) for our instruction." And that instruction is going to produce two enormous consequences which will produce a third consequence that enables you and me to hold tight and survive in the devil's world. The rest of verse 4 is an exhilarating excursion into the grace of God. And we should look at that next time.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1988

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