Intro: Last week we saw that when God speaks, it can be written down. This goes for times when God literally audibly spoke and told people to write down what he said, and for the times when God indwelt people and worked in such a way that they wrote their own words, but those words were exactly what God was saying in that situation.

This week: When we say that the bible is God’s word, we also say that we can read it, know what God has to say to us, and report what he says to others. In other words, we claim to be able to understand what God says to us, and that we can help others understand too. But in our day this immediately raises some objections:

The Objections:

1. Isn’t God too big to be put in a box?

2. Aren’t there some things that are hard to understand?

3. So many different interpretations: how can we really know what the bible says?

Important to understand: this is not just a problem with the bible, but with all writing, and all communication. If you don’t think the bible can be understood, do you think written communication is possible at all?

Answers to objections:

1. Isn’t God too big to be put in a box?

Of course. But if we say we can’t understand the things he’s said, we’ve actually just put him in a box: the box that keeps him from communicating to us. (We’ve also claimed that we clearly understand something about God—that he’s not able to be understood.) Saying that we can understand the bible doesn’t put God in a box, it admits that he’s frees to communicate.

Everywhere in the bible it is assumed that God is an effective communicator. It is assumed that God speaks, and that when he wants to communicate, he is able to. What he communicates are things that we can understand, and therefore things that create obligations for us—they are things we must either believe, or things we must do—mostly, they are always both. What we say about how possible it is to understand scripture is what we say about God’s own ability to communicate.

• God expects us to obey what he tells us. In other words, his word clearly commands things that obligate us to obey. See Deuteronomy 6:1-7
• Jesus assumed the scriptures could be understood, and that they settled matters. Mark 10:4-9
• God is always able to accomplish his purpose by what he speaks: Isaiah 55:10-11

 “The clarity of scripture is that quality of the biblical text that, as God’s communicative act, ensures its meaning is accessible to all who come to it in faith.” (Mark Thompson)

2. Aren’t there some things that are hard to understand?

Yes, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t understand anything. Just that not all things are as easy to understand as others. “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” (Westminster Confession of Faith)

• Peter admitted that some things were hard to understand: 2 Peter 3:15-16
• Even children can understand scripture: Deut 6:7
• God tells us that the way he speaks is something we can grasp: Deut 30:11-14
• By reading and explanation, we can understand the meaning: “So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading.” – Nehemiah 8:8, see also 2 Tim 2:7: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”

3. So many different interpretations: how can we really know what the bible says?

This disagreement is exaggerated. There are a set of teachings in the bible that are not in dispute by anyone in the broad stream of Christianity:

1. There is one God
2. He made everything
3. Humans are made in his image
4. Humans fell through sin
5. God sent Jesus who lived a perfect life and died in our place.
6. Jesus rose from the dead.
7. We must believe in Jesus for forgiveness of sin.
8. Jesus is returning to rule.

These are the plainest things, the most clearly communicated things in scripture, and they are the things which must be believed in order to be saved.

“Scripture is always clear enough for us to carry out our present responsibilities before God. It is clear enough for a six-year-old to understand what God expects of him. It is also clear enough for a mature theologian to understand what God expects of him. But the clarity of Scripture, is person-relative, person-specific. Scripture is not exhaustively clear to anyone. It is not clear enough to satisfy anyone who merely wants to gain a speculative knowledge of divine things. It is, rather, morally sufficient, practically sufficient, sufficient for each person to know what God desires of him.” (John Frame)

“In one part there are whirlpools; and not in another, why then are you bent on drowning yourself in the depths?” (Chrysostom)

So, why are there any disagreements at all?

1. Human deficiencies: Lack of understanding, over emphasizing one part at the expense of another, limited/different perspectives, sin. This is probably the most common reason why there are different views of scripture.
2. God may have left some things in scripture less clear than others. Why would he do that? So that we’d have to focus on, and unite around, the most important things. Also, he wants us to have to help each other, and to exercise love, even in our reading of scripture. He wants us to be humble about things that are less clear, and bold about things that are most clear.

The things that God wanted us to know and believe to be saved are the clearest, most easily understood truths: see Romans 10:5-13

Conclusion: Do you want to know? John 7:17

Set Up:

Week 1: We saw that When God speaks, it can be written down.

• Sometimes he literally audibly spoke
• Sometimes he worked within authors so that what they wrote was what he wanted write

This is what the authors of the bible claim is the case for what they wrote.

In other words: there is nothing about the bible that prevents it from being the actual word of God from him to us. Humanity did not mess up the divinity.

Claim: The Bible is God’s word. When we read it, it is his speech to us.

Week 2: When God speaks, he can be understood.

Though there are some difficult parts of the Bible, and though there are some disagreements about what some things mean, nevertheless, the bible is clear about what we must believe and how we must obey. There is nothing that prohibits God form communicating clearly and effectively to us, and the bible indicates this is exactly what he did.

This week: When God speaks, he can be trusted.

Assertion: The bible reveals a God who…

1. Is able to communicate to us.
2. Has shown a desire and a decision to communicate with us
3. Actually has communicated with us, throughout history
4. Has shown that he communicates clearly and effectively
5. Has shown himself to be perfectly, faithful and trustworthy, at all times.

…Therefore, since the bible is communication from this God, and since nothing about the medium or the authors presents any barrier to this God communicating, this bible must be totally trustworthy, faithful, and true at all times.

Definitions of Inerrancy:

“Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.” (CSBI)

“Inerrancy means that when all facts are know, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything they affirm, whether that has to do with doctrine or morality or with the social, physical, or life sciences.” (Feinberg)

“Scripture is inerrant because the personal word of God cannot be anything other than true. When he gives us propositional information—and he certainly does—that information is reliable, though expressed in ordinary, not technical, language. The written Word, further, is just as inerrant as the oral message of the prophets and apostles. And their word is just as inerrant as the divine voice itself.” (Frame)

Scriptures:

Ps 12:6, Ps 19:7-11, Ps 119:142, 151, 119:160, Pr 30:5, Mt 5:17-18, Mt 12:38-42, Mt 19:4-5, John 17:17

Responses to some common objections:

1. Scripture never claims to be “inerrant.” True: in the sense that there is no Greek or Hebrew sentence that could be translated “The scripture is without any error.” But then, the bible also never anywhere says, “The Bible has mistakes.” It never says, “You will one day find that some of the things which are reported as true in here didn’t actually happen, or they’re actually are not from God, but just people doing their best, so you’ll have to use your knowledge you’ve gained from other places in order to discern what is really true and what’s not.” And, the bible never says, “Once Jesus came, he showed us that a lot of the things that we thought were from God were actually not. So use what you think he meant to see what is really from God and what is just human.” In other words, you can’t use the “the bible never says” argument here. Instead, you have to just see what the bible actually says, and see what the authors of scripture (and the Holy Spirit through them) actually said about what they were writing. And what they say is that a God who is totally faithful, all, knowing, unlimited in ability, and completely without sin or mistake, communicated to or through them. In other words, what they wrote is the words of God, and those words have the same qualities God has.
2. To say the bible has no errors is to ignore the actual issues scripture has. In other words, the bible has issues—errors, contradictions, inconsistencies, issues with science, and moral problems. The only way to reply to this in short is to say that any and all of these issues that are brought up have been thought through and answered by Christians over the last 2000 years. And they have all been answered again at a modern academic level in the last few generations. There is nothing new that catches Christians off guard. In other words, the only issues people ever bring up are issues which have great explanations.
3. But what about all the copying and mistakes over the years? Christians only ever claim that the text of the original manuscripts are without error. But any faithful copy which reproduced the text of the original would also be without error. So there’s no problem with copies just because they’re copies. And now, 2000 years later, even though we do have different manuscripts which differ in some things, we have a situation where we have thousands of those documents, and are able to tell where the mistakes are. And none of the major or minor teachings of scripture are affected by any of the differences. In other words, we might not know what the exact word order of a verse was, but we do know exactly what happened and exactly what message the writers were trying to convey.
4. We don’t need the bible to be without error. We can know God anyway. Maybe, but do we have any indication in scripture that God would have done things this way? Do we have any reason to believe he left errors for us to discover, and left it to us to figure out what they were? This objection ignores the fact that without a totally reliable witness to the things God has said and done, we have to either give up the ability to really have confidence in what we can know about God, or we have to give something other than the bible the status of inerrant. We have to say that our minds have the power to know what is true, and that we can trust our own thoughts. We have to pick some final authority. The scripture claims to be that final authority.
5. It’s not about the bible, it’s about Jesus. We all understand the sentiment. Jesus saves us, not the bible. But this also assumes that there is some kind of conflict between Jesus and the bible. It assumes that Jesus saves us apart from the bible. And it assumes that Jesus would agree with that statement. But in fact, the only record of Jesus thought we have, the New Testament, shows us that Jesus did not have this attitude towards the bible. He saw himself as fulfilling it, obedient to it, and totally in line with it. In other words, what the Bible says, Jesus says. Jesus and the bible are an inseparable team. 

Application: Not discouraging thought or questioning, but encouraging confidence, boldness, and action.

Mt 7:24-27, Rev 22:7-20.

The aim: Confidence in God’s character as totally trustworthy, coupled with confidence in the word of God as totally reliable, leading to confidence that obeying his commands leads to experiencing his promises, leading to an excitement and ability to resist temptation, risk persecution, make sacrifices, and step out in bold faith and do things for God.