Sermon Tone Analysis

I.        INTRODUCTION                                     

 

          A.

I WANT TO BEGIN THIS MORNING by reading the first 4 verses of Jude’s epistle...

 

/JUD 1:1 Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, ¶ To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ:/

/JUD 1:2 May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you./

/JUD 1:3 ¶ Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints./

/JUD 1:4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ./

I BELIEVE THAT WE’RE LIVING in the last days of the last days...

 

I BELIEVE THAT WE’RE LIVING in that very specific time period that Jude is referring to in his letter...

 

MAKING HIS COMMAND in V3 perhaps more relevant to us than to any other generation...

 

/I felt the necessity /(Jude says... I sensed an urgency...) /to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints./

THE WORD OF GOD is under attack in our day; we’ve already seen it, and I believe we’re going to see it even more in the days ahead...

 

AND SO I FELT IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE to begin the new year with an affirmation of what we believe about the Word of God and why we believe that...

 

II.

BODY

 

LAST WEEK WE BEGAN working down through 10 reasons why we believe the Bible is the Word of God...

 

WE MADE IT THROUGH the first 3 with 7 more to go...

 

          A.

REASON #1 was the testimony of Scripture itself...

 

IF THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD we would expect it to make that claim about itself, and it does...

 

IN MANY PLACES THE BIBLE ITSELF claims to be the Word of God...

 

AND WE LOOKED AT SOME OF THOSE CLAIMS last week...

 

BY ITSELF, this reason would certainly not be enough to make us believe it, but it is a necessary starting point...

 

AND WE DO HAVE MUCH MORE evidence to substantiate this claim that the Bible makes about itself...

 

          B.

REASON #2 is the testimony of Christ...

 

AS YOU WOULD SEEK AN ANSWER to the question, “Is the Bible the Word of God?”...

 

IT WOULD BE ONLY REASONABLE to find out what Jesus Christ thinks about that...

 

AFTER ALL, He is the main character and central theme of the Bible...

 

WHAT IS HIS PERSPECTIVE ON THIS SUBJECT...?

 

THROUGHOUT THE NT Jesus Christ referred to the Bible as the “Word of God”, as “Scripture”, and as the “Commandments of God”...

 

HE REFERRED to the people and events of the OT as historical facts...

 

HE HELD PEOPLE responsible for what was written in Scripture...

 

AND HE OFTEN used the Scriptures as conclusive evidence in answering His critics...

 

3 TIMES, while being tempted by the devil in the wilderness, Jesus said, “it is written”...

 

AND THEN QUOTED SCRIPTURE to silence and rebuke him...

 

JESUS CHRIST gives clear testimony to the fact that the Bible is the Word of God...

 

          C.

AND THEN REASON #3 is the testimony of the writers...

 

IT’S VERY CLEAR THAT THE WRITERS knew they were penning the Word of God...

 

AND WE LOOKED at some of the supporting evidence for that last week...

 

          D.

THIS MORNING brings us to reason #4 as to why we believe the Bible is the Word of God...

 

AND THAT IS THE BIBLE’S TEXTUAL UNITY...

 

THIS IS REALLY AN AMAZING THING and something that provides us with very strong evidence that the Bible is the Word of God...

 

AND LET ME BEGIN to build this case by talking about the writings of man...

 

THE WRITINGS OF MAN have always been marked by disunity and contradiction...

 

IF 3 MEN WERE TO WRITE A BOOK on the same subject, you can be sure that those books would be filled with contradictions and glaring discrepancies in philosophy...

 

YOU CAN EVEN SEE THIS in single books that were written by 2 or more authors...

 

AND THEN IN ADDITION to the differences among various authors and their perspectives, there is time that always results in contradictions...

 

HOW MANY TIMES have you seen a best-selling book come out, written by a so-called expert on this subject or that subject...

 

ONLY TO SEE A NEW EXPERT come along 5 or 10 years later to write a new book on the same subject that contradicts everything the former expert said about it in his book...

 

THAT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME...!

 

JOSH MCDOWELL, a well-known apologist for Christianity, was approached one time by a salesman for the “Great Books of the Western World” series, a set that includes the writings of all the leading thinkers throughout the history of Western man...

 

JOSH CHALLENGED THE MAN to take 10 of the authors from the same walk of life, the same time period, the same country, and the same language and ask them about one basic subject...

 

WOULD THEY AGREE, Josh asked...?

 

ARE YOU KIDDING, the salesman replied, you would have a conglomeration...!

 

BUT NOW LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT A BOOK that was written by far more than 10 authors that is not a conglomeration...

 

THOSE WHO STUDY THE BIBLE are continually amazed at its unity and consistency of doctrine, especially given the circumstances by which it was written...

 

THE BIBLE WAS NOT WRITTEN by just 10 different authors, it was written by 40 different authors...

 

AND THE WRITERS were not all contemporaries; these 40 different authors penned the various books of the Bible over a span of some 1600 years...

 

THAT’S A LONG TIME; that represents a tremendous amount of change in culture and philosophy...

 

AND YET THE BIBLE is one book with one consistent theme and no contradictions in its teachings...

 

I SHOULD ALSO MENTION to you that the Bible was written in 3 different languages; Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic...

 

AND IT WAS WRITTEN on 3 different continents; Asia, Africa, and Europe...

 

THERE WAS A SPAN OF 400 YEARS between the penning of the Old and New Testaments, what theologians refer to as the silent years...

 

AND AS FAR AS THESE 40 DIFFERENT WRITERS are concerned, they were all very different from one another, they came from many different and varied walks of life...

 

JEREMIAH was a prophet, Zechariah was a priest, Amos was a shepherd, David was a king, Nehemiah was a servant, Luke was a doctor, Matthew a tax collector, and Paul a Pharisee...

 

AGAIN LET ME SAY that in spite of this incredible diversity, the Bible is one unified book that agrees in doctrine, details of prophecy, what it says about Jesus Christ, and its offer of rescue to mankind...

 

FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION the Bible tells a single story: the rescue of mankind from sin through the death of Jesus Christ...

 

THE OLD TESTAMENT presents Him as the hope of mankind; the New Testament shows Him to be the fulfillment of that hope...

 

THE POINT TO BE MADE HERE is simple and yet very profound...

 

NO OTHER BOOK written by this many authors over this span of time can demonstrate the incredible unity that we have in the 66 books that make up the one Bible...

 

AND I WANT TO SUBMIT TO YOU that this provides us with very strong evidence to support the Bible’s claim, Christ’s claim, and the writers’ claim that this book is the Word of God...

 

          E.

LET’S GO ON TO A FIFTH REASON why we believe the Bible is the Word of God...

 

AND THAT’S ITS MIRACULOUS PRESERVATION...

 

IF GOD CHOSE TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO MAN on the pages of a book, as the Bible itself, Christ, and the writers claim that He did...

 

THEN WE WOULD ALSO EXPECT HIM to preserve that book for us down through the ages so that we could reap its benefits...

 

WHAT GOOD WOULD IT DO for God to reveal His truth to man in a book if men didn’t have access to that book...?

 

WELL, WE DO HAVE ACCESS TO THAT BOOK because God has promised to preserve it for us...

 

AND LET ME BEGIN ON THIS SUBJECT now, by showing you some of the verses where that promise is made and then we’ll talk more specifically about how He has fulfilled that promise...

 

GOD SAID THROUGH THE PROPHET ISAIAH in Isa 40:8...

/ISA 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever./

A VERSE, by the way, that Peter quotes in his NT epistle... (1Pet 1:24-25)

 

IN ISA 59:21 IT SAYS THIS...

/ISA 59:21 "As for Me, this is My covenant with them," says the Lord: "My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring's offspring," says the Lord, "from now and forever."/

ANOTHER SUCH PROMISE comes in Psa 12:6-7...

/PSA 12:6 The words of the Lord are pure words; As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times./

/PSA 12:7 You, O Lord, will keep them; You will preserve him from this generation forever./

IN THE NT it says this in Matt 5:18...

/MAT 5:18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished./

AND THEN MATT 24:35...

/MAT 24:35 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away./

IT’S VERY CLEAR that the God who revealed His truth on the pages of a book also promised to preserve those words...

\\  

AND HE HAS, but not exactly in the way that we might have expected Him to...

 

WE WOULD PROBABLY EXPECT God to fulfill this promise by somehow preserving the original documents that were penned by Moses and Isaiah and Matthew and Mark and Peter and John...

 

BUT HE DIDN’T DO IT THAT WAY...

 

IN FACT, none of the original manuscripts written by any of the 40 biblical authors are even in existence today...

 

WE HAVE NONE OF THEM, not a single one...