We Believe: The Doctrine of Scripture
Focus: We believe that God has spoken through human authors in the Scriptures, the 66 canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. The Bible is the only written, verbally inspired Word of God and is self-attesting, unchanging, and without error in all it affirms. As God’s authoritative, infallible, and sufficient revelation for life, doctrine, and practice, the Bible is to be trusted and obeyed.
Because we believe this, we can view the Bible as trustworthy, relevant, and trustworthy.
If you want to go deeper than the tip of the iceberg (what we will look at today):
Wes Huff’s YouTube channel
Voddie Baucham’s presentation, “Why You Can Believe the Bible”
James White’s library of debates
Let’s break down the three sub-statements that our focus statement makes.
Sub-statement #1: God has spoken through human authors in the Scriptures, the 66 canonical books of the Old and New Testaments.
What do we mean by “The Bible”?
66 books
Written over 1,600 years
Across 3 continents
By 40+ authors
In 3 different languages
The Bible is simultaneously 66 books and 1 book. 66 collected books, but 1 story about God’s plan, His will, and His heart’s desire for His creation.
Many of these authors were contemporaries, writing their book at the same time as another author without much knowledge of that particular author or what they were writing. I’ll give you two examples of what I mean:
See: Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah all wrote prophecies during the 8th century to either the Northern Kingdom of Israel or Southern Kingdom of Judah.
See: Paul, James, Peter, John, Jude who all wrote Epistles laying out new revelations concerning Christian doctrine.
There were no Google Docs shared amongst these authors to compare and contrast notes! Yet each grouping wrote new revelation that confirmed and harmonized with each other that all referenced the same, consistent God (Jesus) in one, continuous and overarching story.
This is remarkable and fascinating! Only God could accomplish such a feat. By this we can confirm what 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
Sub-statement #2: The Bible is the only written, verbally inspired Word of God and is self-attesting, unchanging, and without error in all it affirms.
Many religions claim this statement e.g. Mormonism (The Book of Mormon), Islam (The Quran), Jehovah’s Witnesses (The New World Translation). However, only one book (The Bible) is self-attesting in its accuracy
How we know a religious text is true:
The author is who they claim to be.
They wrote about events that they either witnessed or gathered from other eyewitnesses.
The events written down are honest and accurate to what transpired
Consider just 3 verses in Luke 3:1-3
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Luke names 22 historical references to places and people, verified by archaeology and ancient literary sources outside of the Bible. This places Luke’s writing in a historical framework that is consistent with the time period he claims to be writing in and about.
Contrast this with other texts like the Gnostic Gospels of Mary, Judas, and Peter. Most places, people, and names used are inconsistent with the archaeological and historical context they claim to be writing in. This places these writings centuries after the supposed authors (Mary, Judas, and Peter) lived.
Conclusion: The claimed author is incorrect = untrustworthy document.
Even trustworthy historians get these types of “minor” facts wrong.
See: the historian Tacitus incorrectly labels Pilate as the procurator of Rome, but Pilate was actually the governor.
We confirm this through an archeological find called the “Pilate Stone”.
Luke gets this right, a historian from this time period gets it wrong.
Conclusion: If the author of Luke was not Luke, they might have referenced trustworthy historians like Tacitus! But they would have been inaccurate in the small details. Luke simply referenced his lived experience and got it right. Therefore, it is most likely that Luke is who he says he is.
Why is this important? Every Gospel writer gets these “minor” facts correct even when ancient writers do not.
Furthermore, Luke’s gospel is saturated with Old and New Testament references, some of which he was unaware of when writing. Thus we can conclude that his writings are most likely accurate and inspired by God
Consider the Quran and The Book of Mormon.
These books claim to be written each by one person, an infallible “prophet of God”.
Yet, if it can be deduced that either Joseph Smith (The Book of Mormon) or Muhammad (The Quran) didn’t write the book OR are in fact fallible OR their writings are inconsistent with other accurate texts, the house of cards collapses.
For at least these two books, it is historically confirmed that these individuals were flawed and their writings were inconsistent within themselves and when compared to other reliable texts.
The Gospel of Luke, in contrast, does not to claim an infallible author, but it does claim infallible and consistent content. All of which can be confirmed through dozens of other biblical texts and a library of historical data.
The kicker:
This standard is passed for every single book of the 66 books of Scripture.
Within these 66 books, 40+ authors cross-reference each other an estimated 66,779 times even when some of the authors were not aware of the texts they were ultimately confirming or being confirmed by.
This is what we mean when we say the Bible is self-attesting
It is also unchanging and without error.
The Bible has been transcribed and copied for over 2000 years. Every difference found in the various copies never add or change the doctrinal text but are merely grammatical or spelling errors.
The Bible predicted this:
Isaiah 40:8, The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
Psalm 12:6-7, The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times. You, O Lord, will keep them; you will guard us from this generation forever.
Conclusion: The Bible is miraculously inspired by God and is thus trustworthy in all it affirms.
Sub-statement #3: As God’s authoritative, infallible, and sufficient revelation for life, doctrine, and practice, the Bible is to be trusted and obeyed.
Now we must ask the question: so what?
First, since the Bible is God’s authoritative, infallible, and sufficient revelation for life, doctrine, and practice, we must use this book as a filter for our every belief and action.
Even – or especially – our religious experiences should be tested through Scripture.
Don’t just attend a religious gathering and assume everything is true. Scripture has the final say.
We at Second City Church welcome scripturally-based pushback to anything we do or teach!
In Acts 17:10-11 we meet a group of Jews from Berea. It says in verse 11, “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”
It is noble to hold the word of God in such high regard that we do not let even our most trusted religious leaders become exempt from its scrutiny.
The values we are taught in this world should be tested through Scripture.
We live in a world that is obsessed with self-expression, self-identity, living your truth. But the Bible says in Luke 9:23, “And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Our true identity comes from who we are in Christ, it comes from the Bible. Do not let the world convince you otherwise.
Second, because the Bible is God’s authoritative, infallible, and sufficient revelation for life, doctrine, and practice, we should never add to or subtract from it.
Consider these common phrases:
God only helps those who help themselves.
God will never give you something that you cannot handle.
Don’t judge, only God can judge.
Money is the root of all evil.
None of these are true, none of them are found in scripture. All of them add or subtract from God’s Word.
What was the first lie ever told?
Genesis 3:1-3, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”
Eve added to God’s Word (“…neither shall you touch it” – God never said that) and it led to the fall of man.
Third, because the Bible is God’s authoritative, infallible, and sufficient revelation for life, doctrine, and practice, we should read it. We should study it.
2 Timothy 2:15, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
Joshua 1:8, This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
Psalm 119:105, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Fourth, among many other things I could mention but don’t have all day, because the Bible is God’s authoritative, infallible, and sufficient revelation for life, doctrine, and practice, you should know this:
Jesus loves you, this you know… why? For the Bible tells you so.
There is no greater truth that this trustworthy and reliable book teaches than the fact that Jesus loves you (John 3:16). That He loves you so much that He came to rescue you (Ephesians 2:4-7, Ezekiel 34:11-12). We were meant to live a perfect life (Leviticus 19:2), but we did not (Romans 3:23). We sinned and rebelled against a perfect God (Isaiah 30:1). This book tells us that God Himself, Jesus, came to earth and lived that perfect life we should have lived (Hebrews 4:15). But He died a sinners death, the death you and I deserved (2 Corinthians 5:21). That He rose again on the third day and defeated sin (Hebrews 2:14-15). That what Romans 10:9 says is true, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Saved from a life of bondage to sin, saved from a death eternally separated from the one who loves you that much, and saved into eternal life with Jesus.
Know that Jesus loves you, that He wants a relationship with you, that He died for you and defeated death for you
. Because the Bible tells us so.