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Join Wayne Burger each week as he explores various topics and scriptures and challenges listeners to meditate on God's Word more deeply.
If you had the ability to create a being that had intelligence and could talk, would you not want to communicate with that being? In reality, that's what happened. In Genesis 1, 27, it says, let us make man in our image. In Genesis 2, verse 7, and God formed man at the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
So there's the Creator who created beings, you and me. Would not he want to communicate with us, his creation? If we created something that could talk and had intelligence, wouldn't we want to communicate with it? And so it is with God. And God has communicated with his creation.
God has communicated in different ways. The time men have lived on the earth, they've basically been divided into three different periods. The patriarchal age in which the fathers were the priests of the family, and God spoke to them directly with each father and said, here's what I want you to do.
He spoke to Adam and said, "here's what I want you to do." He spoke to Noah and said, "here's what I want you to do." He spoke to Abraham and said, "here's what I want you to do." So during the patriarchal age, God spoke to men directly, the head of the household. Then you had the Mosaic age. And that began with basically Genesis, Exodus 19, where God gave the Jews a law through Moses. It came to be called the law of God or the law of Moses. And God spoke to that nation through that law.
And now then we're in what is called the "last days", the Christian age. The "last days" phrase does not mean it's just the days before Jesus returns. Peter said in Acts 2 and verse 17, in Acts 2 and Jerusalem in 30 A.D., he said, this is "the last days." It was the last period of time in which man will be on the earth.
Men were on earth, and God communicated through the patriarchal age. Men were on earth, God communicated through the law of Moses. Men are still on the earth, and God communicates through his Son.
The Hebrew writer said in Hebrews 1:1, "God, through its hundred times and diverse manners, spake in time, pass them to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son." The message was written down and recorded, passed around to all the churches, and we have a copy of it. It is that book we call the New Testament.
Now, the Holy Spirit guided the apostles and prophets to write it correctly. Jesus promised this idea in John 14.26 when he said, I will bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you. He was talking to the apostles. Then in John 16.13, in that same context, he said, "but when he, the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth." Now, that guiding by the Holy Spirit, where the Holy Spirit guided the apostles and the prophets, is called inspiration.
Inspiration literally means "God breathed." The idea is that God breathed into these men and guided them in their writings. There are two words that may help us to understand this. Revelation and inspiration. Revelation is when God gives man information. Inspiration is when the Holy Spirit helps that man while he's speaking or writing to guide them so that man does not get it wrong when he communicates it to another man. We see this idea of inspiration and the value of it in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17: "All scriptures given by inspiration of God is profitable doctrine for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished and all good work." You see, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. In this lesson, I want us to understand a little bit about how inspiration works.
But more importantly, I want us to close out by seeing the value of having an inspired book, the value of inspiration. There are a couple of different passages that help us to understand how inspiration works. One of these is 1 Corinthians 2. As Paul writes, he explains how he got the spirit and how his spirit was guided. So I want to read 1 Corinthians 2 as we discuss this.
We can see we begin in verse 6. "Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature. And wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away." Paul said we speak wisdom from God, but it's not wisdom of this age. It's not human wisdom. It's not our wisdom.
Then he goes on and says, "but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory." God recorded some things in the Old Testament that they did not understand until it came into the New Testament. God doesn't have mysteries today. Those mysteries have been revealed. And so he simply said they were a mystery before then because the folks in the Old Testament did not fully understand how that would work. And so again, verse 7, "but we, the apostles and prophets, speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory. The wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." He gives that as an illustration. The Old Testament had some information about the coming Messiah, but it wasn't clear how God was going to save the world through the Messiah.
If he had come out and said, when they killed Christ, then salvation is going to be offered, then the rulers wouldn't have killed Christ. Satan and his allies thought they were destroying Christianity by killing Christ, when in reality, that was God's plan. Mankind could not have been saved had they not killed Christ.
And so that's why he says that if the rulers of this earth had understood this, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But going on in verse 10, "for to us, apostles and prophets, not every one of us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God." The Holy Spirit's work was to guide these men into all truth, to reveal to them what God wanted recorded, what God wanted spoken. And so again, he said God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.
Then he gives an illustration in verse 11: "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him?" In reality, what he's simply saying is, when you see a person, you don't understand that man. He's the only one who really understands himself. I can't determine what he really is like until he reveals himself to me. And he uses that illustration of the Holy Spirit. Nobody really understands God except the Spirit of God.
And we could not understand God except that the Spirit revealed God. Now let's notice how Paul described this revelation. I'm going to read the verse again, verse 11: "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man, except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God, no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God." So that, there's our purpose clause, we may know the things freely given to us by God. Paul said, "I'm not speaking out of my own wisdom. I'm speaking because the Spirit revealed these truths to me." And so he says the Spirit knows the mind of God, the depth of God.
Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God. So that we may know the things freely given to us by God. Now then notice what he says, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit.
He said, these things that have been freely given to us, these are what we speak, not in words of human wisdom. They didn't come from Paul's great knowledge, but by those taught by the Spirit. Paul said the words that he used were the words that God wanted there.
They did not use their own wisdom, even though God used their talents and their abilities. He said that those words came from God, they were approved by God. So that it's not human wisdom, but God's wisdom that is being revealed.
This also tells us something about the inspiration of the Bible. A technical term is the Bible is there is verbal, plenary inspiration. Verbal, plenary inspiration.
Verbal means every word is inspired. If a word is plural, God meant for it to be plural. If a word is singular, God meant for it to be singular.
If a word is masculine, he meant for it to be masculine. If it's feminine, he meant to be using the feminine form. Every word of the Bible is God inspired.
Plenary is simply a word that means full. There's nothing left out in the Bible. It's all right here that we need.
The Spirit led them into all truth. When the apostles and prophets quit writing, the Bible was complete. There's not been a revelation since then.
There's not been any additions to the Bible since then. We have it all. It all happened with the apostles and prophets when they finished writing.
And so it goes on to say, and I'll read verse 13 again, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him. God does not give the Spirit to those.
God gave this miraculous measure to the apostles and prophets that they could use that so that they would be guided into all truth. And that's the reason Paul said in Ephesians 3, whereby when you read, you can understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ. You see, God communicated.
He would not communicate if we couldn't understand it. God wants us to understand. God has made it possible for us to understand his will as it's revealed in the Scriptures.
And that's what I want us to look at for the next couple of minutes, is the value of having the inspired Word of God. First off, we have a God-given standard to follow. When we have this book that is inspired, we know what God wants.
This book tells us the moral life God expects us to live. This book determines what kind of religion we have. This determines when we serve the Lord's Supper and what's involved in the Lord's Supper.
This book determines how often we take communion. This book determines what kind of worship God accepts and what kind of worship God does not accept. This is the reason we sing without an instrument.
God did not authorize using instrumental music in worship. God authorized only singing. And so the value of having this inspired book is the fact that we have the standard that God wants us to meet.
It's the standard of our moral life. Throughout the Scriptures, we can find the exhortations to how to live, what to do, and what not to do in our moral lives. We have in this book the standard of what He wants in worship and what He doesn't want in worship.
Human wisdom and tradition are not the standard. Jeremiah said a long time ago, it's not in man that walks to directive steps. You see, we are made by God.
God gives us the steps that we should take. God guides us by giving us that Word to protect us. In Matthew 15, 9, he said, they teach the traditions of man.
And he said that those are not acceptable in God's sight. And then the last point we'll make with regard to the value of having an inspired book is the fact that this book will be our judge. God has given us the standard, and in a sense, the Judgment Day is sort of like a test day.
Actually, He's grading the test papers. We have written the kind of book by the lives we live. And in the Day of Judgment, He will compare what we've done with what the book has said.
Jesus said while He was on earth in John 12, verse 48, the words that I have spoken to you shall judge you in the last day. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 10 says, they'll all stand before the judgment seat of Christ to receive things done in the body, with the good or bad. And John closed out this great book, the Book of Revelation, and the final book of the Bible, when he said, I saw the dead, both small and great, stand before God.
And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life, and the dead were judged out of the things that were written in the books according to their deeds. You see, we have value. There is value in having the Word of God.
We may not fully understand inspiration, but we can understand that it was the Holy Spirit guiding the apostles and prophets to make sure that they wrote all that God wanted, did not include anything He did not want, and gave us this inspired book that can guide us and direct us. And the value of it is, today, we don't have to guess at what God wants. He has revealed what He wants in our moral life, in our religious life, and that those things of human traditions and those things bound by humanity are not to guide and direct us, but only the Word of God, and that in the Day of Judgment, it is this book that is going to judge us by what we did.
Have we followed the book? Are you following the inspired Word of God? We need to keep that in mind and realize the value of having the book we have. And until next time, let me urge you to meditate on the Word.