The Bible: The Word of God (Hebrews 1:1, 2)

The Bible: The Word of God (Hebrews 1:1, 2) “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath ...
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The Bible: The Word of God (Hebrews 1:1, 2) “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, . . .” (Hebrews 1:1, 2; KJV).

INTRODUCTION The fundamental premise of the Christian religion is that God has spoken to us. In Hebrews 1:1, 2, the writer said, “God having in olden time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by diverse portions and in diverse manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son.” The fact that God has spoken to us is startling and significant. It presupposes that God has an intelligent mind and that He is able to communicate with whoever has the ability to understand. It presupposes that we can know what God wants us to believe and do. Furthermore, it presupposes that God has a right to command us. His wisdom is far greater than our own; He knows better than we how we ought to think and live in His world. Without these presuppositions, there would be little use in God speaking to us. God spoke to the fathers through Moses and other intermediaries. God declared His will, and men understood that if they did not do the will of God, they were rejecting the mind of God. Today, we have the will of God expressed to us through the Bible. We understand, as we read the Word of God, that God is speaking to us. The apostle Peter said that “no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). In 2 Timothy 3:16 Paul wrote, “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” These verses give us the eternal declaration that the Bible is God’s Word. The Bible, therefore, has divine authority. This should weigh heavily upon our minds as we read it.

What are the reasons for accepting the Bible as the Word of God? We preachers too often assume that everyone who attends a worship service has everything worked out. We often assume that everyone knows the Bible is the inspired Word of God, but every man’s faith regarding this truth needs to be rejuvenated periodically. Moments come when we begin to feel the onslaught of opposition from the world about us. A renewal of our faith in God and His Word allows us to go about the business of living the Christian life with inner confidence.

I. REASONS FOR REJECTING IT In the last hundred years or so the Bible has been the subject of attack from skeptics, infidels, and atheists all over the world. Up until the time of the Civil War, most Americans believed in the Bible as the Word of God. It was extolled for its marvelous qualities and virtues. But after the Civil War a spirit of inquiry set in. Doubts were cast upon the Bible. Today it is not strange to find that many professors reject the Bible as being the Word of God. As for believing that it reveals to us the mind of God, a broad strata of American society today rejects this implication altogether. Fundamentally, people reject the Bible because they believe it is not scientifically respectable. They think that we cannot really believe it or follow it. But this is not the case. In the first place, one has to keep in mind the purpose God had when He gave us His divine revelation. The holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Spirit of God with the idea that this would be a religious revelation. The purpose of it relates to our duty to God. The Bible primarily consists of stories and revelations which remind us that God has a way for us to live. We can learn much about how to live through the experiences of the past. But we can also learn much through the direct revelations that God has given through His inspired men. It was never the purpose of the Bible to be a scientific work. Nowhere does it

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pretend to be a textbook on geology, astronomy, or medicine. It is fundamentally a religious book. As God gave us His religious teaching, there are times when the writers must involve themselves in the common experiences of the world around them. When this occurs, we would expect that in no place would we find the Bible contrary to anything that is scientifically known in any of these other realms of information. When we search the Bible, we find that it bears agreement with all that men have scientifically proven to be the truth. Suppose I were writing a document or monograph in the field of agriculture. Suppose that in order to do it, I would have to take an occasional excursion into the fields of economics and sociology. But suppose that these occasional excursions would reveal total inaccuracies on my part. Would it not reflect, to some extent, upon the main theme that runs throughout the monograph? This is the way we have to look at the Bible. When we read the story of creation, we find the Bible beginning with that august statement: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep: And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:1, 2). When we take the time to look through Genesis 1 and 2, we discover that God lists those things created on each day. For example, on the first day, light was created; on the second day, air and water; on the third day, the land and the planets; on the fourth day, the lights; on the fifth day, fowls and fish; on the sixth day, the animals and man. This is the order of creation as Genesis gives it. This is also precisely the order of creation followed by all of the geologists today. Everyone of them agrees with the order of creation as narrated in the Bible. In the beginning of Genesis, we have the five fundamental divisions into which geologists and scientists tell us all things must be divided. Herbert Spencer said that the manifestations of the unknowable are divisible into five different forms: time, space, matter, force, and motion. When we look at the first two verses of Genesis, we find time—“in the beginning.” When God created the “heavens,” there was space. The “earth” is matter, and in the “spirit of God” is force. As the Spirit moved upon the face of the

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waters, motion is seen. According to the scientists, that which provides the forms into which the unknowable is divided is found at the very beginning of Genesis. What is the religious teaching of the creation story? In summarizing the story, we find it in four different observations. First, the creation story in Genesis tells us that the world is not selfexistent. Instead, it took an outside force, namely God, who is superior to all other elements. The second religious teaching of the Genesis account is that man is the crown and culmination of creation. See Genesis 2:18-20. God has given to mankind a dignity that belongs to him and him alone, because out of all living things, he was the only thing created in the image of the Almighty (Genesis 1:27). The third factor seen in the Genesis account of the creation is the fact that matter is not eternal. No physical matter has an eternal quality or characteristic about it. The fourth significant religious factor about the creation story is that it dispels all the theories of the ancient world concerning the beginning of the world. In contrast to the doctrine of atheism, the Genesis account proclaims the existence of God. David later says that the fool says in his heart there is not a God. Against polytheism, the Genesis account says that there is one God. Against pantheism, the Genesis account shows a separation between God and the material world. Against materialism, the Genesis account reminds us of the spirituality of God and man. When we view the Bible in its proper perspective, science does not annihilate it at all. When excursions are made into the areas of science and natural phenomena, perfect agreement is seen. A fair look at the Bible’s purpose leads us to accept its truthfulness. The second reason many reject the Bible is the existence of the supernatural, such as miracles within it. Today’s world, even today’s religious world, has largely rejected the miracles of the Bible. They allude to them as simply fairy tales that our ancestors at one time accepted, but we, in an enlightened age, cannot accept. I have been reading the writings of Gerald Kennedy, a bishop in the Methodist Church. Much of what he says is very penetrating. On the other hand, much of what he says does not make any sense, in my judgment, and might very well represent many

of the religious leaders in America today. For example, in reading through his account of the Jews traveling across the wilderness to Palestine, he found the story of God giving manna to the children of Israel to be very interesting. But he didn’t believe it was a miracle. To disprove the Bible, he told of a little plant that produced a white sort of fruit that grew in the desert in this area. His theory was that two million Jews fed on this plant; Everyday they got a supply to last them through that day. This is the sort of reasoning that takes place in modern America. Many people like the Bible because of its moral tones, but they reject the supernatural elements of the Bible. This is true of many denominational bishops and leaders in America today. In most of the large denominations, serious conflicts threaten to divide the churches over whether or not they will accept the miraculous elements of the Bible. The Presbyterian church, the Lutheran church, and the Baptist church have been shattered during the last five or six years over this very conflict. The question is: Shall we accept the miraculous elements that are recorded in the Bible? Is this as difficult a consideration as we might imagine it to be? Personally, I accept the teaching that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I do not believe that over millions and millions of years the world just naturally evolved out of nothing. If our minds will go back to infinity, somewhere back in time there was a first “uncaused cause,” as Aristotle called it. Somewhere in the beginning a Mind, a Power, called God by the Bible, brought this world into being. It was that God who put the sun in its orbit and made it start its ceaseless journey throughout the centuries. It was that God who spread the planets in the heavens above and who made our world with all its marvelous qualities and characteristics. If I can believe in God who had the power to make the world in the beginning, then I do not have any trouble believing in a God who fashioned the mountains, the valleys, the seas and the oceans with His own hands. If God can create, I believe that God also had the power to cause the waters in the sea to stand still while the children of Israel marched through on dry land. I do not have any difficulty in believing that a God who can bring life into existence can heal a

blind man, a deaf man, or a lame man. A God who can create life can reach into a tomb and bring out a dead man and stand him forth as one who lives and breathes. The fundamental problem is our belief in God. The all powerful God is able to perform every miracle that is ascribed to Him in the Bible.

II. REASONS FOR RECEIVING IT Why do we believe in the Bible as the Word of God? One reason is this: Stretched out throughout the Bible are myriads of prophecies. Events that were to be unfolded at a later time were predicted long before they ever happened. Isaiah, for example, told of the annihilation of the city of Babylon four hundred years before the event happened. (See Isaiah 14.) Babylon would be so completely destroyed that not a sign of it would remain. When the old Arabs would eventually come to the legendary sight, they would not pitch their tents at night. A mysterious charm would come over the place. But four hundred years before it happened the prophet Isaiah foretold this event with complete accuracy. When we realize that God told about events hundreds of years before they came to pass and when we realize that they came to pass just as God said they would, it is not hard for us to believe that the Bible was written by a supernatural being. We can believe the Bible because of the miracles which it contains. The Lord’s life is marked with miracles by which He demonstrated He was the Son of God. If Jesus’ works had been no greater than those that you and I do, none of us would believe Him to be divine. He had to demonstrate by divine acts His own divinity. Since a phenomenon outside the natural world is something that only God could perform, Jesus performed miracles to demonstrate His link with God. John says at the close of his Gospel that the signs attributed to Jesus were all written “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:30, 31). The miracles of the Bible corroborate the deity of Christ. They established before the apostles the divine mission which God had given to them. They told the world that these were events that no sorcerer could perform.

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You and I can believe in the Bible because of the way in which it has touched people’s lives over the world in every century. Men are given loftier ideals as they read the Bible. The literature and rhetoric of the Bible has filled the speeches of many orators. The Bible has left its imprint on the American nation so indelibly that we can never entirely escape the influence of it. The Bible has also been the inspiration of some of the greatest work the world has ever known. When we went through the Sistine Chapel in Rome three years ago, the whole chapel was milling with people who were looking at the marvelous work of Michelangelo. On one wall was the last judgment which he pictures so vividly. On the ceiling were pictures which took a total of fifteen years to complete. But all of them tell the story of the Bible and its impact upon our world. In ancient Greece the statue of Minerva in Athens was made by Phidias. The statue of Jupiter was made on Mount Olympus by the same man. It stood forty feet high and was made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. It pictures Jupiter in an attitude of repose. John Lord said that when Phidias was asked what inspired him to make the marvelous statue of Jupiter, he replied, “I was inspired by the writings of Homer.” John Lord adds that Michelangelo was inspired to create the Sistine Chapel and all his other tremendous works of art by his daily poring over the prophets of God and his acquaintance with the Bible. One stands on the banks of the Arno River outside of Florence and sees a gigantic statue of David made by Michelangelo. In another place in Rome one can put his hand upon the statue of Moses, which was also made by Michelangelo. The greatest works of art that the world has ever known have been inspired by men who were acquainted with the Bible. Strangely enough, scientists also owe a great deal to the Bible. Many scientists are inspired by their reading of the Bible. A number of years ago Matthew Murray was an old geographer in America. One day while he was sitting at home and poring over the eighth Psalm, he ran across an expression that leaped out at him: “Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas” (Psalms 8:8). At this time there were many ship collisions in the North

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Atlantic. Those coming from England over to America and those going the opposite direction collided in a certain place in the Atlantic, causing many lives to be lost. Murray was interested in how to avoid this, and when he read that expression “paths of the sea,” he said to himself that if God says that they are there, they must be there. He began searching and found that in the North Atlantic there was a current of water that runs west and another one that runs east. He said to the officials, “All you have to do is put your ships on each of these currents and let them take advantage of them and there will be no more trouble.” And there wasn’t. A man was inspired in science by the reading of his Bible. The American Oil company sent an expedition to Egypt a number of years ago. One man was sitting in his tent one night reading from Exodus 2:3. He read the story of the mother of Moses making a little ark in which to place the baby. She had pitched it with pitch and the phrase stuck. He said to himself: “I am a geologist, and I know that wherever there is pitch, there is bound to be oil. It just figures.” The American Oil Company drilled a well and struck oil. One of the biggest oil wells in the world was found there because one man ran across an expression in the Bible. The Bible has also inspired some of the greatest literature. During the American Civil War, Lew Wallace was a rather spectacular and flamboyant personality. Wallace went to work and gathered up a regiment and became a colonel. Before long, he was given a brigade and became a brigadier general. He was sent south. He was to come to Shiloh to join the forces of General Grant. His brigade was badly needed. He brought it down the river. The battle at Shiloh lasted for days in all. He brought his brigade down the river, but north of Shiloh, he took his brigade off into the swamps of Water Oak. They couldn’t find their way. The battle raged for two days, and when it was all over General Lew Wallace came along with his brigade, too late to help. Wallace, more than anything else, coveted a military career, a great name in the military, but he didn’t get it. He spent the rest of his life trying to figure out what happened to prevent him from getting there in time for the battle.

Early in his life, Wallace had a hobby that meant a lot to him. He gathered old Roman coins. He had quite a collection of them. He liked to read about what went on in the Roman Empire. One day he was riding on a train with Robert Ingersoll. Ingersoll said to him, “Lew, why don’t you write a book that will deal with the life of Christ showing that Jesus was just a mere man like the rest of us.” Lew Wallace said, “I think I will do that.” He went and started his research. He began by reading the New Testament. After a while, he came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was not an ordinary man. When he began reading books, like the book of Acts, he saw the fortitude of Christians under trial, and he made up his mind that this was one of the most marvelous things he had ever heard about. He ended up writing Ben Hur, a story to show the strength of character of a single Christian in trials and tribulations that beset him in the early century. The Bible inspired that book, as it has inspired thousands of others. Looking into the story of our nation, we have a country that was built originally upon the foundation of the Bible. The old Puritans were unhappy in England. King James reminded them so much of King Pharaoh in the Old Testament, and the Atlantic Ocean reminded them of the Red Sea. New England reminded them of Wilderness. They were to establish a new system of government that would be built upon God and the Bible. While the old Puritans left much to be desired, it was they who built America fundamentally on the Bible. Many of America’s greatest political orators were inspired by the Bible and the great and golden phrases of the Scripture filled many of their speeches. Abraham Lincoln, when he first arrived in Washington began work on his first inaugural address, called in his family. He said to them, “I want to read it to you.” He read the speech to them, and after they responded he said, “I want you to go into the other room; I want to be alone. They went out into the other room, and they distinctly heard him as he prayed to God. He saw the storm and knew that nothing could be done to hold the coming crisis in abeyance. Lincoln often told his friends in quiet confidence, “I go to the Bible, because there is no place I know to go. When I ask my friends their advice,

they can’t help me; and I read my Bible in the trying hours of this ordeal.” Lincoln went to work and memorized large selections from Isaiah, Job, and other parts of the Old Testament. When he came to write his second inaugural, we find it to be one of the great masterpieces in American literature, but it was a document which is far more a religious work than it is a work of statesmanship. He often expressed his quiet confidence in God. He believed in Him so strongly. Lincoln, the day he went to Ford’s Theater, told his wife he wanted to go. She said, “Lincoln, you’re too tired to go; why don’t you stay home and rest. The war is over; the peace has been signed at Appomattox. Rest tonight.” He said, “I can’t; I’ve got to go someplace and get my mind off everything, and I want to go and just sit at the theater.” He went to the theater with her. He wasn’t interested in what was happening on the stage. He talked with her like a chatterbox. He said to her at one spot, “Honey, you know what? When I retire from public life, there is one thing I want to do more than anything else. I want to go to the Holy Land. I want to see where Jesus lived and where the prophets of God lived. More than anything else, I want to see Jerusalem.” When he spoke the word “Jerusalem,” the bullet entered his brain. His wife later said that this was the last word that he ever uttered. Lincoln is typical of so many other men who have been inspired in their own respective walks of life by the Bible. Today America has drifted far afield from its confidence in the Bible as the Word of God. From our Supreme Court on down, the confidence in the Bible as God’s spoken Word has dwindled. Will Durant, in his book on the Joys of Philosophy has made the observation that the reason America was such a great nation in the nineteenth century was because it was a Bible reading century, and people believed in the Bible. He said that the Bible, as far as its hold on man is concerned in America, stopped in 1925, with the Scopes trial. No longer will the Bible shape American morality. No longer will it guide us in the way we live our lives, because no longer do we as a nation accept it as God’s Word. We look about us today and see the fruit of that folly. We see it in the low status of our moral condition in America. We see it in the lack of

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dignity which men ascribe to their fellowman. We see it in the crimes that are emblazoned across the headlines of our newspapers. We see it in the colleges and universities, where people attempt to show their own independence by defying every principle of morality that is laid down in the Bible. The demise of the Bible in America has been the greatest tragedy we have undergone in the last fifty years. It is something for which we pay a dear price in the lack of integrity in public life, the lack of honesty in our dealings with one another, and the debasing of our own moral and spiritual conduct.

CONCLUSION Andrew Peabody was at one time an old professor at Harvard University. At the close of his career he was ready to go a different direction in retirement, and he said something interesting about the Bible. He said: “If I had my life to live over again, I would be willing to devote the solid portion of my days to the studying of Paul’s epistles. I should feel that in these alone there is work enough and joy enough for a life of scholarship. As far as the Old Testament is concerned, I more and more feel the divinity of that marvelous compilation of books, and that with every fresh assault of skepticism the sense of this divinity has grown upon me.” He added, “How can one account for the theology of the Old Testament? The Jews were not an enlightened people. They were out of line with the higher culture of their day. They never had a commanding place among the nations of the world at any time. Egypt was the most enlightened nation of the world, and yet her worship was the most debased. Greece was foremost in art, poetry, and philosophy, but they never led the way into an exalted monotheism. As a result we look back with great alarm and surprise at the Old Testament.” “When I read the 23rd Psalm, and I remember who David was; when I consider the barbarious manners of his courts and the savage condition of his times, and call to mind the particulars of his history, I feel that I am in the presence of a miracle as truly as if I had stood by the sepulcher

in Bethany when the Lord raised Lazarus from the grave,” Peabody said. Peabody pointed out that the morality of the Old Testament was supreme, that the decalogue was a perfect summary of man’s duty to God. He pointed out that the decalogue was not written by a mad horde that left Egypt, but rather, it was written by God who gave it through the hand of Moses. Moses did not write it, because Moses was a stern vindictive. It bears upon the very nature of the imprint a mind and soul greater than any man who ever lived. I believe that is the feeling we must have about the Bible once we understand and encompass it. —Earl I. West

ILLUSTRATIONS DEAR GOD If our lives have become shallow, deepen them. If our principles have become shabby, repair them. If our ideals have become tarnished, restore them. If our hopes have become faded, revive them. If our loyalties have grown dim, brighten them. If our values have become confused, clarify them. If our purposes have grown blurred, sharpen them. If our horizons have become contracted, widen them. Be thou the North Star of our lives and may the compass of conscience help us to steer an honorable course.

PERSEVERANCE After a great snow-storm, a young boy began to shovel a path through a large snowbank behind his grandmother’s door. He had nothing but a small shovel with which to work. “How do you ever expect to get through that drift?” asked a passerby. “By keeping at it,” was the boy’s cheerful reply.

©Copyright, 1984, 2004 by Truth for Today ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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