Word of Salvation – Vol.24 No.01 – October 1977
Our Lord’s View Of The Bible
Sermon by Rev. G. I. Williamson on John 10: 35
Scripture Reading: John 10
Psalter Hymnal: 44, 247, 29, 237
I think we are all aware of the disturbing things that are going on in the Church today. We have heard so many denials of the doctrines of the Christian faith within the visible Church itself, that we are almost getting used to it. We hardly feel shocked anymore. And even in those denominations that used to be so firm in these things, the changes are now coming in so rapidly that we wonder how long it will be before these too become tossed about in a sea of uncertainty. Perhaps, more than anything else, we simply wonder: what is the root of it all? What is the basic cause of all this change, and doubt, and uncertainty? The greatest religious issue in Jesus’ day was the question of authority! On the one hand you had the Sadducees who did not believe in such things as the resurrection of the body or the continued existence of the soul after death. And on the other hand you had the Pharisees who spent their time arguing about the merits of the great Rabbis who had lived in the past. The one looked for truth in the power of human reason as they found it in themselves, whereas the other looked for truth in the scholarly men of the past. But then one day Jesus of Nazareth began to speak, “And it came to pass,” says Matthew, that “the people were astonished at His doctrine: for He taught them as One having authority, and not as the Scribes.”
Now the question we want to think about today is simply this: why did Jesus speak with authority, when so many other religious teachers in that day did not speak with authority?
- Our first thought might easily be that Jesus had this authority because He was the eternal Son of God! ‘If He was the Son of God,’ we say, ‘then this means that He was the second person of the God-head – very God of very God – of the same substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and equal in power and glory’. And of course, this is entirely true. BUT it is NOT the reason why Jesus spoke with authority. The Bible says that Jesus, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation; and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
Jesus had all authority in heaven and earth, in other words, because He was eternally God. But when He took upon Him the form of a servant, He Himself was placed under authority. He was made in the likeness of men, and rendered obedience to an authority higher than Himself. That is why the Scripture plainly tells us that when the work of our salvation was finished, and Christ was risen from the dead, there was a certain sense in which this absolute divine authority was again given unto Him. “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth,” said Jesus to His disciples, “for to this end Christ both died and rose, and revived”, says Paul, “that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living.”
- The fact of the matter is, then, that Jesus did not speak with divine authority simply because He was Himself the second person of the Trinity. For in order to be our Saviour, says the Scripture, “it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren .. …in all things.” And this we clearly see in the passage of Scripture from which we have taken our text. Here we see Jesus plainly telling the Jews that He was God. “I and My Father are One,” He says. But then, when they took up stones to stone Him for it, what does Jesus do? Does He just rest his defence on His own divine authority? No, not at all. “Jesus answered them, is it not written in your law, I said, ye are gods? If He called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken, say ye of Him, Whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, – Thou blasphemesť, because I said, I am the Son of God”?”
A]. THE BIBLE ONLY
Now the first thing you must notice is this: Jesus makes His appeal to the written Word of God as the only criterion of truth. And this, mind you, is what made Him so different from the Sadducees and Pharisees and Scribes. The Sadducees were men who looked for truth and authority in the discoveries and theories of the great philosophers of the day. The Pharisees tried to find it in the scholarly opinion of the Rabbis. And the Scribes were looking for the same thing in a critical study of the Scriptures. But here we see the divine Son of God taking His stand on the written Word of God as the only standard of truth.
And it is important to realise that this was always His procedure. When Satan came to tempt our Lord in the wilderness, this – as you will remember – was Jesus’ only defence. When Satan misquoted one text of the Bible, Jesus resisted the temptation by interpreting Scripture with Scripture. And it was always the same in His many disputes with men. When the Jews try to ensnare Him with some of their clever rationalistic questions, He answers simply this: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” And to the rationalistic Scribes, who knew the Scriptures so well in one sense, and yet did not know them at all in the true sense, He simply says: “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think we have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me, and ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life.” He did not say that they were wrong to search the Scriptures! On the contrary, He commanded them to search the Scriptures as they had never searched before. But He insisted that those who really accepted what the Scriptures plainly teach, would come to Him that they might have life.
Sometimes we overlook the fact that Jesus always honoured the Scriptures as the ultimate authority. But this is the case even when we find Him teaching the people the truth of God by way of illustrative parables. In Matthew’s Gospel we read the parable of the householder who planted a vineyard, and worked so hard to make it productive, before going off to visit in a distant country. And then when he sends servants back, they are killed, one by one, by the husbandmen who are in charge of the vineyard. Now we might think that this is something that Jesus is saying entirely on His own authority. But this is not what we read. For, “Jesus saith unto them,” says Matthew, “did ye never read in the Scriptures, the Stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore I say unto you, the Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” So even in His teaching by parables, He constantly appeals to the Scriptures.
Even in His teaching of the twelve Apostles – men who believed that He was the Son of God – He is constantly appealing to the Scriptures as the standard of truth. “Then He took the twelve,” says Luke, “and said unto them, ‘behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.” And this was not only true before Jesus died and rose again. It was also true even after His resurrection from the dead! For as soon as Jesus was again with His disciples, this was the point that He once again impressed upon them. “These are the words which I spake unto you,” He said, “while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me. Then He opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and He said unto them, ‘Thus it is written’.”
B] THE BIBLE WHOLLY
The second thing you must notice is that Jesus made no distinction between one part of the Bible and another.
One of the interesting things about our Lord’s use of the Bible is the fact that He often makes His quotations from some of the most difficult places. We have a good example in the words of our text. For here we find Him quoting from one of those texts that serves as a good example of the sort of thing that makes some people question the idea that we can accept the whole Bible as inerrant! The quotation we refer to is found in Psalm 82:6, which read as follows: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”
Now, of course, the great question that Bible critics like the Scribes would ask would be this: ‘how can the Bible say that men – men who die the same as other men – how can it say that they are gods?’ Well, that is a difficult problem of interpretation. And you notice that Jesus doesn’t try to solve the problem. I do not say that He could not have solved it. But the fact is that He did not do so. He only uses this text as a basis for defending Himself against the charge of blasphemy. “How can you charge Me with blasphemy,” He says, “when I call Myself the Son of God – how can you do that when there is a text in the Bible in which ordinary sinful men are called by the title of gods?” And the point I am making is that for Jesus there is no argument about one thing; no argument at all. As long as a thing is found in the Scriptures, then that makes it final. For Jesus is thinking of the whole Bible when He says: “Scripture cannot be broken.”
One of the most disputed books in the Bible today is the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. This book has received more criticism from the scholars and theologians of modern times than almost any other book in the Bible. And it is perfectly true that there are difficult problems of interpretation. Take, for example, the simple fact that this is numbered among the five books of Moses, and yet, in the latter part of the book we have the account of Moses’ death. However, the interesting thing is that this was one of the books of the Bible that Jesus quoted in his temptation in the wilderness. When the Devil tried to deceive the Son of God, our Lord simply put His complete trust in that which was written even though it happened to be a part of the Bible that presents us with many problems.
About forty years ago, in Holland, there was a very important controversy centring around the first few chapters in Genesis. Was there a real man by the name of Adam? And was there really a Garden of Eden? With a talking serpent, and so on? Well, forty years ago the answer was an unqualified ‘yes’. But this is no longer the answer that we hear from some of the leading scholars and theologians in Holland today. But one of the things you will notice in the teaching of our Lord is the unqualified acceptance of what the Bible says.
Remember when He was disputing with the Pharisees about the question of divorce? “Have ye not read,” He says, “that He, which made them at the beginning, made them male and female?” And do you not remember, He asked, how the two became one flesh? If it is written in the Bible, in other words – any part of the Bible – then Jesus accepted it as true. This is why we find Him talking about Moses and the burning bush, about Noah and the Ark, and Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt, and all the rest.
When the Apostle Paul said that, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God”, he was simply repeating something that he had learned from the Lord Jesus Christ. So was the Apostle James, when he said, “Do you think that the Scriptures speak in vain?” And so was Peter, when he said, “All flesh is as grass. But the Word of the Lord endureth forever.”
For when Jesus said that Scripture cannot be broken, He meant that the whole Bible was the inspired Word of God, and that no man has a right to reject any part of it. He proved it by quoting one of the most difficult texts, and resting His defence before God against the crime of blasphemy on what the Bible says.
C] THE BIBLE VERBALLY
The third thing you must notice is that Jesus considered the Bible to be inerrant in every word.
Now this is, to our mind, the most important point in terms of our modern situation. For one of the things that we now see happening – even in once great Reformed denominations – is this tendency to try to make allowances for some error in Scripture.
- One of the ways in which this is done is by trying to make a distinction between inspired thoughts and words. Paul, it is said, was truly an inspired man. God really did reveal to him many wonderful things. But then God left it to Paul to express what he had received in words of his own choosing.
- Another view which is widely current today is that the inspiration of the Bible is only concerned with things that are spiritual in character. The prophets and apostles, in other words, made plenty of mistakes when it came to things like science and history. It was only when they were speaking directly about the Lord Jesus Christ or about the world of the spirit that they were strictly accurate in what they said.
- One of the newest views that I have come across is that which is associated with the so-called ‘new-evangelicalism’. And this is the view which says that the Bible is not inerrant, but only that it is infallible; which means that it is not correct in everything it says, but only that it will not lead us astray. If we follow the teachings of the Bible in a general way, in other words, it will never lead us into anything that is not beneficial.
There are other theories that I could mention as well, but the thing you must see is that all of these different views have one important thing in common. They do not say that Scripture cannot be broken! They do not admit that we can believe every word of the Bible as absolutely inerrant. And nothing could be more certain than the fact that Jesus did accept the Bible as correct in every word. Yes, He even went farther than that. For He even went so far as to say that not one letter not even one jot or title – and these are the smallest marks in the Hebrew written language – that not even one of these would pass away till all of them were completely fulfilled. “And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass,” said Jesus, “than one title of the law to fail.” And that is what we see in the passage of Scripture from which we have taken our text. Here we see our Lord defending Himself from the charge of blasphemy against God on the basis of one little phrase and we might even say upon one single word – “ye are ‘gods’.’
Sometimes, when we read the Bible, we wonder how it is possible that all these various prophecies of Scripture can fit together precisely. And this was one of the problems that the Jews had in Jesus’ day. In one part of the Old Testament they would read that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, the city of David. In another part they found that He was to be called a Nazarene. In yet another place they could read, “out of Egypt have I called My Son”. But you notice what Jesus said: “All things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.” And they WERE accomplished, every one of them! They DID pierce His hands and His feet, as the Psalmist said they would. He DID come riding into Jerusalem on the colt of an ass, according to the word of the prophet. And not one word of God failed of its exact fulfilment. As the Psalmist has truly said,
“Thy Word is true from the beginning:
and every one of Thy righteous judgments endureth forever . . .
Thy word is very pure: therefore Thy servant loveth it.”
Was it not our Lord Who said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”? Was it not the divine Son of God Who said, “Scripture cannot be broken”? One might just as well say that you can break the handle of a vase without breaking the vase, as to say that one can find fault with one single word of the Bible without finding fault with the Bible as a whole.
D] THE BIBLE ABSOLUTELY
The last thing you must notice is that Jesus held this view without any reservation. When Jesus said that Scripture cannot be broken, He was simply saying that it was absolutely impossible that Scripture could ever be found in error on any subject whatsoever, in even the slightest degree.
Some years ago there were critics who said that Luke was in error when he said, in Acts 13:7, that Cyprus was ruled by a Roman proconsul. They were just certain that this island was too unimportant for that. But critics no longer say this today. They now accept it as a fact, since the archaeologists have unearthed evidence that this was so. Again, in the year 1861, the French Academy of Science published a list of 51 so-called scientific facts, each of which it was said contradicted the Bible, But today, just over 100 years later, every- one of these 51 scientific facts has been replaced by something else, and the Bible remains today – as it always has – absolutely free from any proven error. And this is the way it always will be. We know this because Jesus Himself told us that the Scripture cannot be broken. But suppose someone should say, ‘How do you know that Scripture cannot be broken? And if you say that Jesus said so, how do you know that Jesus really said those words? In other words, aren’t you really arguing in a circle? Aren’t you saying you believe that Jesus said that because the Bible says He did, and that you believe the Bible because Jesus says it is true?’ The answer to that question, of course, is that we ARE reasoning in a circle. But so are those who reject the Word of God! For we could also say to them, ‘Why do you doubt that Jesus really said that? Isn’t it because you doubt the Holy Scriptures? And why do you doubt the Holy Scriptures? because you doubt what Jesus said?’
Isn’t it
And that has always been the choice, ever since the beginning of the world. We must either take God’s Word as it is just because it is God’s Word or else we must listen to the Devil and make our own sinful minds the final standard of truth. You either start with the Word of God, and believe in that as the final and absolute authority, or else you start with your own reason, and believe that it is the final and absolute authority.
A few years ago, a man defended himself against charges of doctrinal heresy. He spoke for an hour and a half in defending his position. Now here was a man who rejected the authority of the Bible. There was one very important thing in that speech. Here was a man who was absolutely unwilling to accept the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God. And here was a man who trusted completely in his own powers of reason and understanding. But do you know what he said when he came. towards the end of his speech? Well, he said this: “I make no claim to be free from doctrinal error”. Or, in other words, he admitted that he was not really certain of all these things he was saying. In fact he went on to say that there is no such thing as fixed and final truth. That was the most important part of his speech. For it made it quite clear that there are only two alternatives: one either has the absolute truth of a Bible that has no errors at all, or else one has only the shifting sands of ever-changing opinion.
Sometimes we imagine that the problems are very complicated. And we look around at the Sadducees and Pharisees and Scribes and we say: “Well, if these men can’t be sure, how then can we be sure?” “If they do not have any absolute truth, how then can we ever obtain it?” And to that question there is a very simple answer! It is to take the stand that our Saviour took when He lived in this world – and was tempted in all points just as we are – yet without sin. It is to take our stand on the Bible. It is to say that the Bible alone is our authority. It is to say that the whole Bible is our authority. It is to say that every word of the Bible is our authority. And it is to say that that authority is not qualified by any ‘ifs’, ‘ands’ or ‘buts’!
As we read in Psalm 119:
“Forever settled in the heavens,
Thy Word, O Lord, shall firmly stand;
Thy faithfulness shall never fail;
the earth abides at Thy command.
Thy Word and Works unmoved remain,
Thine every purpose to fulfil;
All things are Thine and Thee obey,
and all as servants wait Thy will.
The wicked would destroy my soul,
but on Thy truth I muse with awe;
Imperfect I have found all else,
but boundless is Thy wondrous law.”
Would you know the truth which can set you free, and keep you from falling?
Then settle it in your heart this day, once and for all:
“SCRIPTURE CANNOT BE BROKEN!”
AMEN.