TEXT MESSAGE FROM GOD

 

Bible – 1

TEXT MESSAGE FROM GOD

… based on 2 Timothy 3:16

Texting is one of the most common forms of communication in the U.S., 

with 90% of Americans,349 million of us, 

sending over 6 billion texts every day.

Now for a long time, I was a holdout.  I remember my very 1st text.  

One day my friend, Ross Hart, sent me a text, “Rande, do you text?”

I responded, “no.” From what I could see, it was simply a bunch of useless communication that people were sending each other, 

& I didn’t want to waste my time doing that.

But today I want us to think about a text message that has come to us that is extremely important … a text message from God.  And we get these text messages from God in the form of the Bible.  And so today, & for the next 3 Sundays we’re going to be looking at how to read, how to interpret, 

& how to apply the Bible to our lives.

Listen now to Good News, to Paul’s text to Timothy, & also, to Bear Creek Church.  Within our hearing comes the Word of the Lord …

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, and giving instruction for right living. 

(2 Timothy 3:16) 

The grass withers & flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever. 

(Isaiah 40:8)

May the Lord grant that we may engage in contemplating the mysteries of His Heavenly wisdom with really increasing devotion, to His glory and to our edification. Amen

Now as we begin this series, I want you to see that God has communicated with us in the form of a Book … 

& we’re going to look at 3 aspects of that.

The 1st is the authorship of the Bible.  Now I know if I ask you, “Who authored the Bible?” … You all would give the short answer to that question … (God).  But the real question is … how did God author the Bible?  When theologians talk about this they refer to it as the inspiration of the Bible.  

Now let me read our Scripture passage again, 

& I want you to listen for the word “inspiration.”

“All Scripture is inspired by God & is useful for teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, & giving instruction for right living.”

All Scripture is inspired … okay, but what does that mean?

I’ve asked you to bring your Bibles today, so if you would open them to 2 Timothy 3:16 … do any of your translations have anything different? … 

(N.I.V. “All Scripture is God-breathed.”)  I like that, 

because it’s closer to what Paul had in mind when he wrote these words.

You see, our word “inspired” doesn’t mean what it did back in Paul’s day.

When we used the word “inspired” we’re usually talking about someone who has been moved emotionally or creatively to do something.  For example, I could say, “I got inspired this past week to plant 5 bushes in the butterfly garden we’re trying to make.”  

Inspiration for us means that we’re moved to do something.

Or to use it in a more grandiose way, when George Fredrick Handel sat down to compose “The Messiah,” he was inspired.  (There were 260 pages of full orchestration that were banged out in just 24 days!  And when it was 1st performed in 1743 & the choir got to “The Hallelujah Chorus” even the King of England leaped to his feet.  Everybody said, “That’s inspired.”)  But that’s not what Paul was talking about.  The N.I.V. translates it the way Paul intended to communicate it … “all Scripture is God-breathed.”  That means that what God wanted written got written.  That’s the doctrine of inspiration.

Now, just so we don’t miss the point, theologians like to tack another word on before inspiration … “verbal” … verbal inspiration.

They want us to know that it’s the words themselves; it’s the actual writing that God inspired … that God-breathed.  You see, some people think that the inspiration of the Bible means that the original writers, the human authors, were inspired.  God breathed into them.  So, when Moses or David or Paul sat down to write … God came upon them in some special way.  

And then, as best they could, they wrote stuff down.

But the trouble with that is there’s no guarantee that what we finally got was exactly what God wanted to say.  There could have been something lost in transmission.  The authors could have been inspired but chose the wrong words.  They could have unintentionally misled us with what they actually wrote.  So, it’s not the writers who were inspired.  

Let me repeat that.  It’s not the writers who were inspired.

Other people suggest that the inspiration of the Bible means that the readers are inspired.  So, when I pick up the Bible, & I read it, & God speaks to me … I’m inspired.  They believe that “the Bible is the Word of God when it becomes the Word of God to you.”

Well, Scripture is inspired whether we ever feel inspired when we read or not … because it’s not the writers, it’s not the readers, 

it’s the words themselves.  “All Scripture is God-breathed.”  

The words in the Bible are the exact ones God wanted there.

Now this doesn’t mean that the human authors were simply secretaries taking dictation from God.  There’s a uniqueness to every book in the Bible that reflects the individual author’s personality, & their cultural setting, 

& their historical context.  So, if we sit down & read through the Bible,

we’ll find that Moses’ laws don’t sound anything like David’s Psalms.

And David’s Psalms don’t sound anything like Solomon’s Proverbs.  And Solomon’s Proverbs don’t sound like Zechariah’s prophecies.  And Zechariah’s prophecies don’t sound like Matthew’s Gospel, which doesn’t sound anything like Luke’s history of the Church, which doesn’t sound like Paul’s letters.  There’s variety because of the individuality of human authors.  And yet somehow God insured that it’s what He wanted written, & exactly like He wanted it written. “All Scripture is inspired by God.”  It’s God breathed.

Now that makes the Bible a very unique Book.  

This is a Book like no other.  It’s not like other books that we can pick up at Fallen Leaf or Naughty Dog bookstores down in Nashville.  

It’s not just some book that we can check out at the library.

And just in case you’re thinking that I’m basing my whole theology on 

1 lonely verse, let me say that 2 Timothy 3:16 is not the only reason that I believe that this is a God inspired/God-breathed Book. 

Here’s a logical reason … because I want you to know that believing 

that the Bible is inspired doesn’t require a blind leap of faith.

My logic follows this track.  1st, I’m faced with a choice …

either God exists or He doesn’t exist.  I think it’s reasonable,

I think it’s rational, I think it’s intelligent to believe that God exists.

There are many scientifically inclined people who believe that God exists.

They look at what He has made & conclude that there is a Creator.

So, I believe it’s reasonable to hold that God exists.

Now if God exists, He is either personal or impersonal.  I think it’s reasonable to conclude, as I look at creation, that He’s a personal God.

Now if He’s a personal God, He has either chosen to reveal Himself to us or to not reveal Himself.  Well, what’s the point of Him being a personal God if He’s not going to reveal Himself?  

He either wants to be known or He doesn’t … I think He wants to be known.

Therefore, either God has revealed Himself to us in 1 consistent, coherent, truth source … or He’s chosen to reveal Himself in many conflicting, 

competing truth sources.  I think it makes far more sense to believe that God has revealed Himself to us in 1 coherent, truth source.

That means that either the Bible is that one consistent,

coherent, truth source, or it’s some other religious writing.

And over the years, as I have read different religious writings … 

I’ve come to believe the Bible to be the Book.

Now some people may not accept the choices I’ve made, 

but they can’t say that I’ve just taken a blind leap of faith.  

It’s been a reasonable, rational, intelligent decision.

Here’s another Scriptural reason for believing the Bible to be inspired … fulfilled prophecy. The Bible has over 1,800 predicted prophecies.  

And they’ re not just some general, vague kind of prophecies, 

like what we find in a fortune cookie.

For example, there are prophecies about the coming Messiah, 100’s of years before He came to earth.  Michah, the Prophet, predicted 800 years before Jesus was born, that He’d be born in a little, inconsequential town called Bethlehem. (Micah 5:2) Daniel predicted the exact time of His arrival. (Daniel 9:24-27) Zechariah prophesized that one day He would enter Jerusalem like a conquering hero on the back of a colt, (Zechariah 9:9) 

but later He’d be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. (Zechariah 11:12-13) 

Isaiah prophesized that He’d be put to death among criminals,

& yet He would be buried in a rich man’s tomb. (Isaiah 53:9) David predicted that His hands & feet would be pierced, (The Psalms 16:18) & that’s especially interesting because in David’s day crucifixion had even been thought of.

Those are amazing prophecies … & to me they underscore the fact that the Bible is a supernatural Book.  There’s not another book like it out there.

Now I dare say that if we knew right now that God sent us a text message … boy, we’d check it out immediately, right?  Well, God has communicated text messages to us in this Book.  So, the question is … are we reading them?

Now some of the messages are words of comfort & encouragement … 

God knows that some of us need that.  Some are words of challenge.  God’s text message is going to kick us in the backside, because He wants us to stop doing something, or start doing something.  Some of the messages are going to be personal revelation.  God doesn’t want us guessing what He’s like; He wants to tell us what He’s like.  He’s communicated that to us through the text messages that we call the Bible.  So, are you reading your messages?

A 2nd aspect is called the canon, the canon of the Bible.  Now when I say “canon”, I don’t want you to think “boom-boom” cannon.  The word I’m using has 1 “n” & comes from the Greek, which means “measuring stick.”  

The canon of Scripture is the measuring stick; it’s the rules that were employed to determine which books ought to be included in the O.T & N.T. … 

& which books ought to be left out.

The Bible breaks down into 2 major parts …the O.T. & the N.T.

Have you ever wondered how the decision was made?

What were the criteria used?  The O.T. is made up of 39 separate books.

The earliest written by Moses around 1600 B.C. … the last, by Zechariah, written about 400 years before Jesus … a span of almost 1,200 years.

How did they come together into the O.T.?

According to Jewish tradition, it was a scribe, a religious leader, 

named Ezra who in 426 B.C. got together a group of his fellow scholars, 

& they determined which books were inspired (God-breathed) & which ones weren’t … & they put together the canon of the O.T.

The N.T. was somewhat like that.  The N.T. begins with the Gospels, biographies of Jesus, so they’re A.D.

The 27 books of the N.T, became the official canon in 363 A.D. when the Council of Laodicea met.  These were Christian leaders from around the then known world, & they determined which books were in, & which books were out, which books were God breathed/inspired & which books were not.  

Now I know there are skeptics out there who question this process.  

Here we are in the early 300’s, & one day the Gospel of Matthew is just an ordinary biography, & then the next day, because of some church council decides to put it into the canon, it’s now considered to be God inspired.

Being canonized didn’t make a book God-breathed/inspired.  Being canonized simply recognized that a book already was God-breathed/God inspired. 

There’s a huge difference between the 2.

Here’s an illustration.  Kathy & I go over to Anderson, where there’s a used bookstore that we love.  There’s an old painting hanging on the wall that I really like, so I buy it.  I get it home & want to fix the frame that’s all beat up.  I take it apart & on the back I find another painting.  

And in the corner of this other painting there’s a signature … Rembrandt!  And I think, “no way.”  So, I take it down to Jeanne at the Art Gallery, 

& she calls in the experts who put it through all sorts of tests, 

& determine that it’s the real deal, it’s an authentic Rembrandt.

Here’s the question … when did my painting become a Rembrandt? 

 Did it become a Rembrandt because the experts called it a Rembrandt?

Is that when? … No, it became a Rembrandt when Mr. Rembrandt painted it.  When did the books included in our Bible become the inspired Word of God? 

… When God inspired them.  So, Ezar & his associates in 426 B.C. didn’t make the books included in the O.T. canon inspired by God … they simply recognized them as such.  And when the Laodicean Council got together in the mid 300’s & determined what books ought to be in the N.T. they didn’t make those books God inspired … 

they simply recognized the ones that already were.

Which leads to the next question … how did they determine that? 

There were 4 basic qualifications; 

4 tests that each book considered for canonization was submitted to.

#1 … the authorship test.  In the O.T. the author had to be a Prophet or a major spokesperson of God.  In the N.T. the author had to be one of the Apostles or a close associate of them.  

Now Luke tells us in his preface that there were some other writings about Jesus out there, (Luke 1:1-2) & then over the next couple of centuries a # of other stories about Jesus popped up.  Now the reason that all those other writings were rejected is because they couldn’t trace their authorship back to an Apostle.  We can contrast that with Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John which were written by people who knew Jesus or were closely associated with people who knew Jesus.  Plus, their Gospels were written within a generation of Jesus’ life.  They had to pass the authorship test.  

#2 … the accuracy test.  Did the book being considered for canonization get its’ facts straight?  Was its’ history, its’ geography, 

its’ details about names & places … were all accurate?

I get the Smithsonian magazine, & there was an article a couple of months ago about a modern archaeologist who had gone back & carefully checked out all the references that Dr. Luke made in The Acts to countries, 

cities, & islands, & he concluded that there wasn’t a single mistake … 

the accuracy test.

#3 … the alignment test.  The canonizers noted that there was nothing super weird in the books considered to be inspired by God.

They aligned with the other inspired books.

Now when I say super weird, I’m not ruling out the miraculous.  

When we read through the Gospel accounts about Jesus’ life, 

(Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John), we find times that Jesus calmed storms, (Mark 4:39) healed lepers & the blind, (Matthew 11:5) 

& fed over 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread & 2 fish. (Luke 9:13-17)

But those aren’t “weird” because each of those miracles had a specific purpose. (john 20:30-31) But in the writings that were rejected we find stores like the time when Jesus, as a young boy, made birds out of mud, & then clapped His hands & they flew away.  That’s weird.  Or the time that Jesus, as a young boy, pushed a friend off a cliff so He could raise him from the dead.  That’s weird.  

So, the books included in the O.T. & the N.T. had to pass the alignment test.  Do they seem to fit?  Are they in concert with the other inspired books?

And finally, there was the acceptance test. Now please understand this one.  

Long before the 39 books of the O.T. & the 27 books of the N.T. were officially canonized, believers had already informally recognized & treated them as sacred writings.  It didn’t take to 363 A.D. for believers to determine that certain books were God inspired … they had been using these books for years.  In fact, the books that were kept out of the Scriptures were ones that were never accepted across the board by believers anyway.

What I want you to understand is that the Bible that you hold in your hand today is a reliable Book.  These are genuine text messages from God.  

They have been put to the test.  

The question again is … are you reading them?

So, we have the inspiration of the Bible, the canon of the Bible, 

& 3rdly, the reading of the Bible.

I love books, (duh, there’s a newsflash).  I especially love biographies, & as you know, I also love used bookstores.  I have favorites in various places throughout the country.  There was one in Gettysburg that I particularly liked, & once when I went there, I came across a biography of Fanny Crosby.  Now I admire her, & we all love her Gospel songs.  So, I bought it.

Inside the front cover was an inscription stating that it had been given to someone on Easter Sunday 1927.  I thought, “How cool is this, over ½ century ago, somebody read this book for the 1st time … the book I’m now holding in my hand.”  But as I began to read the book, I found that it had been cut improperly.  In fact, many of its’ pages were still connected.  

I had to get an exacto knife & slit the pages apart.

Now think about that for a moment.  I got the book back in the late 1980’s.

For over 50 years that wonderful book had been in people’s possession …

& no one ever read it or even opened it!

This Book is from God … it continues to annually outsell every other book that’s printed, & yet there are people who aren’t reading it.  What a loss.

I’ve heard all the excuses.  In fact; I’ve used most of them myself.

Some say they aren’t regular Bible readers because they don’t have the time.  Now we all know what a lame excuse that is.  

We have the time to do the things that we consider to be a priority.

So, if you’re in that category & just can’t find the time, let me challenge you to begin living by a simple rule … determine before you do any other elective activity in the course of a day … you’ll read your Bible.  Before you pick up a newspaper, a magazine, a book … read your Bible.  Before you allow yourself the time to return emails, make sure you’ve read your Bible.

We have to give up the excuse … I don’t have the time.  

This Book is God speaking to us, & we need to read it.

There’s another group who aren’t regular Bible readers because they spend all their “devotion” time listening to Christian music or reading devotional books.  And while those are certainly good things to do … 

if they have become a substitute for reading the Bible, 

then we’re letting the good keep us from the best.

Ezar was a religious leader at a strategic time in Israel’s history.  

The people had just returned to their homeland from 70 years of captivity in Babylon, to find everything in ruins.  The walls of Jerusalem were a pile of rubble.  The Temple was destroyed.  And the people knew exactly why all that had happened.  It was because they had wandered away from God.  

They had stopped being obedient.  But now they were given a fresh start, 

a new beginning, & God’s Word need to be part of that.  So, they asked Ezra, their spiritual leader, to get the Scriptures & read it to them.

(You see, most of them couldn’t read, & even if they could,

there weren’t copies of the Bible in every home like there are today.)

So, here’s the story:

“On the 1st day of the 7th month the people of Israel were all assembled in Jerusalem, in the square just inside the Water Gate.  They asked Ezra, the priest & scholar of the Law which the LORD had given Israel through Moses, to get the book of the Law.  So Ezra brought it to the place where the people had gathered – men, women, & the children who were old enough to understand.  There in the square by the gate he read the Law to them from dawn until noon, & they all listened attentively.” (Nehemiah 8:1-3)

The people wanted to get their lives back on track spiritually 

& operating according to God’s Word.  And they stood in the town square for 6 hours, listening intently, while Ezra read it aloud to them.

“Ezra was standing on a wooden platform that had been built for the occasion. … As Ezra stood there on the platform high above the people, they all kept their eyes fixed on him.  As soon as he opened the book, they all stood up.  Ezra said, ‘Praise the LORD, the great God!’  All the people raised their arms in the air & answered, ‘Amen! Amen!’  They knelt in worship, with their faces to the ground.  Then they rose & stood in their places, & the Levites … gave an oral translation of God’s Law & explained it so that the people could understand it.” (Nehemiah 8:4-8)

I’ve been thinking about that scene all week, & have made this my prayer for Bear Creek Church … that all of us, me included, in fact, 

everyone who comes here would have that kind of hunger for God’s Word;

that we all would want to build our lives on it.

That all of us would become regular Scripture readers;

that we would pick up this Book & begin to check out God’s message to us.

What good are God’s text messages if we don’t read them?  

God wants to communicate with us.

MARANA THA