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Lessons and sermons from the Berclair Church of Christ in Bartlett Tennessee
In our first lesson, we've been assigned the topic by the elders, the inspiration of the
scriptures.
It's certainly fitting in regard to our theme on what does the Bible say to begin by
talking about the fact that the Bible is not only a unique book.
But it comes to us from God.
It is literally inspired by God.
And the position that we hold, just so that you'll know, and I'm sure we all in agreement
on this, is that the Bible is fully verbally inspired of God.
There are various views of scripture concerning inspiration, but we believe that it is
word for word inspiration from God.
It's put in a beautiful way and a picturesque way so we can all understand in second.
2 Samuel chapter 23.
Down in verse 2, David, who wrote much of the Bible as you know, because he's the great
psalmist, the sweet psalmist of Israel, he said, Lord spake by me, and his word was in my
tongue.
Well, that's letting you know that David didn't formulate his own words, but the words he
received were from God.
His word was in my tongue, not just a thought or a sentiment.
but his word was in my tongue.
Even our Lord Jesus Christ states in John 12 verse 49 and 50 that his doctrine is not his.
My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
Jesus was speaking what God wanted him to say when he was preaching and teaching here on
earth.
It's important for us to see this.
Now, if we're gonna talk about the inspiration of the scriptures that the Bible has
inspired, the Bible needs to say that.
We can't say that for the Bible to make it say something it doesn't say.
That wouldn't be fair and honest.
We have to see if in the Bible it makes the claim to be God's word.
Now you're ahead of me on this already.
You know that the classic text for it is 2 Timothy chapter 2, chapter 3 rather, in verse
16 and 17.
This passage of scripture just reminds us says all scripture is given by inspiration of
God.
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good
works." Look at the claims made in this passage of Scripture.
All Scripture, that's Old and New Testament.
In 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 15,
says, the Apostle Peter says, that there are some things that are difficult to be
understood, in which some twist the scriptures, some of the writings of Paul.
Paul's writings are classified by Peter as scripture, in case you're wondering about that,
that's 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 15.
So all scripture is given by inspiration of God.
They break this down so many times in the discussion to talk about what is speech and what
are words.
And they talk about how words are formulated in the human body.
It requires the ingesting of air and the expelling of air across the vocal cords and
utilizing the tongue and the lips to formulate the words.
You ever know anybody has a lisp and lisp's asses on everything?
Well, they've got something going on with his teeth.
He's making that sound.
All of us use our tongue, our throats, our lips to formulate words.
And so when the passage says, scripture is given by inspiration, it means literally,
breathed.
God breathed words coming to God, man.
You notice that it's profitable.
The scriptures are profitable.
We're talking about eternal words here.
When Jesus turns to his disciples after he had begun to teach some strong doctrine in John
6, and the multitudes begin to walk away, well, Jesus turns to the 12 and says, will you
go away also?
Not only does that show no compromise, Jesus is not going to compromise just because he's
not popular.
Will you go away also?
And the disciples realizing the weight of his ministry, the value of his words,
Peter, speaking for them, says in verse 69 of John 6, Lord, to whom shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life.
So these words are words of eternal life.
You know, we can read a magazine article or a newspaper article, and we can read a post on
some Facebook or YouTube, but these words are eternal words.
Any moment that we spend reading and studying them, any hour we spend trying to commit
them to memory, any time we share these teachings with others, we're talking about eternal
words.
So it's profitable.
It's always going to be profitable for us to turn to the Bible, the inspired Word of God.
And then notice just quickly the categories in which it is profitable.
It's profitable for doctrine.
Doctrine is simply teaching.
It's not just that there are some key doctrines, cardinal doctrines, but everything in the
Bible is teaching.
And Christianity is a taught religion.
Jesus said, into all the world and teach.
Teach all nations.
So it's teaching.
The Bible is profitable for doctrine or teaching.
Also, the Bible is profitable, he says, for doctrine, for reproof.
You know what reproof is?
To show you when you're wrong.
The Bible is sometimes called the mirror of the soul because when we hold it up and read
it, we can see the flaws in ourselves by looking at the Bible.
It's going to direct our words and our thoughts.
For example, Matthew chapter 12 verse 36, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth
speaking.
So we can see what kind of heart we have by evaluating the words that we speak.
And we want our words always to be seasoned with grace that you may know how you ought to
answer every man.
Colossians chapter four verse two.
So it is profitable for reproof.
We may need to be reproved.
We may need to take this word and reprove others.
We do a good deal of that in a public format when we're reproving people for teaching
error because it's going to cost men and women their souls.
And so, reproof.
That's why the Bible is given.
It's not our opinion about something or how we feel about it, but it's what the Bible
says.
Also then, for correction.
You know, it's one thing to show somebody they're wrong.
That's needful.
But you also need to show them how to correct that.
I don't know if you ever try to play golf or not.
I like to try to play golf.
I'm not any good, but I like being out there on a beautiful day like this.
They groom that place so nicely.
You're with friends.
You have good conversations.
There's a good cold Coca-Cola at the end of the round.
But you can always improve.
You have to be corrected.
I played a round of golf one time with a fellow that was a pro.
He actually knew what he was doing.
And he would watch me in my awkward swing, for example, at the tee box.
And he would say, here's what you need to do.
And he would, I thought, boy, if he's gonna start telling me what I need to do, this will
be a long conversation.
He would just correct me in one crucial area.
You need to stand a little bit, your stance a little bit wider, place the ball parallel
with your right heel, and I could hit the ball better.
Correction.
He didn't just say you're doing it wrong.
He showed me how to get it right.
And oh, I think it knocked like a half a stroke off of my game, and I scored under 150
that day.
I was really proud.
Corrections showing somebody here's the right way to go You know, it's the right way and
then instruction in righteousness.
That's how to stay right You know some people don't understand why should we return Sunday
evening or Sunday night Wednesday night so we can stay right instruction in righteousness
is needed the Bible commends the Bereans for being more noble than those in Thessalonica
in that they receive the word with all readiness of mind
You know they did?
Search the scriptures daily whether those things were so.
That's instruction in righteousness.
Sometimes people think, well, I've got everything I need.
I'm no longer smoking and drinking.
I'm not out here running around my wife.
I'm not even cursing.
So I'm good.
I'm good to go.
No, need instruction in righteousness now.
You need to be grounded in the faith, firm and steadfast.
For the seal of the Lord is this, the Lord knows those that are his.
And let everyone that names the name of righteousness depart from iniquity.
Second Timothy two in verse 15.
We need the way of righteousness.
And that's why the scriptures are given.
So we've established from this classic text that the Bible is inspired of God.
And it's important for us to see that.
It's able to save our souls, James one.
in verse 21.
If the Bible didn't make that claim, I'd be up here talking without any basis, in fact, of
what I'm saying.
But sharing with you that the Bible makes that claim, it causes us to appreciate these
words of the Bible that we have before us.
Now what I'd like to do in the second place, I was preaching at the middle school of
preaching one time and the young preacher students came up to me and they said, brother
McDave, we want to know something.
I said, what's that?
They said, how do you preach without notes?
I said, well, let me ask you something.
They said, I said, how many points do you usually have in your lesson?
And they said, I don't know, five or six.
I said, well, see, that's your problem.
You can't remember five or six points.
My lessons, I usually have two points.
I can remember both of them.
That's how you can preach without notes.
Oh, we're starting to get it now.
So this lesson this morning really has two points.
Number one, to establish that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, the inspiration of
the Scriptures from the Scriptures.
And then second, to prove the inspiration of the Scriptures from the Scriptures.
Let me tell you what I'd like to do.
I'd to give you three examples.
There are many, but I will limit it to three in the interest of time.
The first of these examples will come to us in a very familiar passage of Scripture in
Genesis 12, verses 1 through 3.
We are all familiar with these passages of You will see that this is God calling Abraham.
He is promising Abraham to make of him a great nation.
And in speaking of making him a great nation, he will say to him, I will make thy name
great, thou shalt be a blessing.
And I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse at thee.
And indeed, shall all families of the earth be blessed.
In this reading, and we can see later in Genesis 17 and 18, God making a statement to
Abraham, I will bless your descendants like the stars of the sky and like the sand on the
seashore.
He's indicating to him that those who are his spiritual descendants would be innumerable
in number.
And even today, when we read over in Galatians chapter 3, we are all children of Abraham
by faith in Christ Jesus.
That is of in Galatians 3 and verse 26.
Now at the time when Moses is writing, and we know Moses lived about 1500 BC, 14, 1500 BC,
when we start discussing the Exodus, we'll get down to 1425 is the Exodus, and we'll look
at Ramesses II and things to try to get a date, but we're way back in the dawn of time.
And Moses is going to write Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Those books attributed to Moses are without question from the pen of the leader Moses.
And Moses is writing this promise that God made to Abraham long before Moses' birth.
And he is stating the fact that God is going to bless the descendants of Abraham so that
they will be numberless like the stars of heaven and like the sand on the seashore.
I want you to bear in mind this because we're going to be trying to emphasize the
inspiration of the Bible.
And I might do this by asking a question, how did he know that?
How did he know the stars were innumerable?
know that?
Take notice of this with me if you will.
We're at 1500 BC.
We move forward in time, those 1500 years to get us to the time of Christ.
We move out beyond that, approaching nearer to our time over here in 2026, to the year
1600.
And in the year 1600 we encounter a man, an astronomer, by the name of Galileo.
And you know what Galileo did?
He came up with a telescope.
They didn't have a telescope of any merit before Galileo.
He's known in history.
You can look him up in any history book, in any astronomy book.
You can Google his name and you'll find that prior to Galileo, it was universal that
everyone believed there could be as many as one to three thousand stars in the sky.
And if you were the one who said they had 3,000 stars, then you were...
start out counting them, but I ain't never seen that many stars.
I don't know if you know what you're talking about, but we'll go with one to three
thousand stars in the sky.
And he developed a telescope where he could peer into the heavens, and he came to see that
in the Milky Way galaxy, the stars are a hundred times that.
Many stars.
And he would see those we call nebula and so forth where you see clouds of stars today we
know so well from the Hubble telescope and other means.
He could see their groupings of these stars.
And whereas he might have considered one of these galaxies to be one star, he expanded the
number from one to three thousand to a hundred times that by looking at his telescope.
That was in the year 1610.
1600 years after the birth of Christ.
So now my question, how did Moses know and how was Abraham told that your descendants will
be like the stars of the heavens?
He wasn't talking about one to three thousand people.
He was talking about innumerable and compared it for sake of reference to the sand that's
on the seashore.
Each grain of sand.
While you step your foot in one place, you'll step on 3,000 grains of sand.
Walk down the beach and you'll walk through hundreds of thousands of grains of sand.
How did he know that?
I'm suggesting for your consideration this morning that the only way he could have known
with any determination, with any accuracy at all, is if the God who made those stars knew
they were innumerable.
And as Moses is writing with the pen of inspiration,
He's telling the people that your descendants will be innumerable like the stars in the
heavens.
So that's just one piece of evidence I wanted to put on our plate today to look at when we
consider the inspiration of the scriptures.
A second that's similar in regard to science is the observation made by Matthew Fontaine
Murray.
Now Matthew Fontaine Murray is an obscure person to most of us.
He's not particularly known in matter.
religion except for this.
And he was known, came to be known as the father of modern oceanography.
And he was the head of the U.S.
Naval Oceanography Association from 1844 to 1861.
Get the date now.
1844 to 1861.
And as the story goes with Murray, he was sick one time, and he's laying up in his bed and
he's reading his Bible, and he's reading through the book of Psalms.
And when he casually reads across Psalm the eighth chapter, he reads about this statement
of paths in the sea.
Well, now, we're familiar with paths in the woods.
You don't want to get lost, on a path.
We're familiar with paths.
They give us a sense of direction to the destination.
But the Bible said paths in the sea.
How could there possibly be paths in the sea?
You run your hand through water, just closes right back up.
You don't see any determination that your hand had made a path.
What is the Bible talking about?
Paths in the sea.
Before him, no one had considered that, that we have any record of.
Paths in the sea.
David wrote about that a thousand BC, paths in the sea.
And Murray said, if the Bible says there are paths in the sea, I'm going to set out to
find them.
And he did.
And he found the very familiar wind currents and ocean currents and became the father of
modern oceanography in discovering what's known very commonly today as the Gulf Stream.
If you look at a map and you look at the continents and you see North and South America,
There is actually a stream, just as if it was a stream along a pasture somewhere.
This stream in that water moves from south to north.
And once it goes across the Arctic, it moves from north down through the UK, down through
Africa to the south.
It makes a huge circle.
And it's constantly flowing.
You ever heard of the doldrums?
Back during the days of sailing ships when they'd start out from England to America or
America to England, they would set out to sail and if the winds were not blowing, when
they got in the middle of the Atlantic, 5,000 miles, you get out there 2,500 miles from
shore, if the winds died down, you didn't have a motor you could crank up, it'd be useless
to try to paddle, and it was called the doldrums.
And a lot of the sailors and ships perished in the doldrums because they couldn't move.
But after Murray, when they found out about these currents, they started, if you want to
go from America and you want to travel over to England, you would take the Gulf Stream and
you would go in a northerly direction.
It'd speed up your trip, it would ensure your passage so that you could wind up at your
destination in England.
Do you know that even today, our airline pilots will use those currents to save fuel
traveling from one continent to another?
question, how did he know?
How did he know about it?
How did David know about that?
All those years, what did I say, 2,800 years before they were actually discovered by man,
how did he know it?
Nobody could tell him, nobody knew it.
God knew it because he created the worlds and he speaks of the paths.
in the sea.
So there's your second point of evidence I'd like to give you today about the inspiration
of the Bible.
And I to submit for your consideration these things I'm talking about are unassailable.
They're unanswerable by the critics of the Bible who want to say, the Bible is just the
word of man.
I had a conversation with a fellow that I've been trying to talk to, trying to teach.
He's difficult to reach because of his profanity and his bad attitude.
But I do see him from time to time.
And trying to talk to him, I told him one day,
would like to have a study of the Bible with you." He's getting in his truck and I said,
he said, why?
I said, because I want us to go to heaven.
You all know what I want us to go to heaven and I want to study the Bible with you, my
friend.
And he said, my view of the Bible that it was put together by a bunch of kings who were
trying to just hold the people together.
I said, see, you need to study the Bible.
because I can show you where the Bible comes from.
It's called the transmission of the text.
I can show you how we got the manuscripts of the Bible in the form we have today in, for
example, the King James Bible.
You need to study.
I want you to study that.
Well, he told me, look, you're just from the Bible Belt.
I'm from Boston.
We don't pay any attention to that in Boston.
I said, look, we want to get to heaven.
And if you do, you're going to have to study the Bible.
Well, I understand what you're saying, but no.
He just didn't want it.
Now there is a prejudice mind.
He won't open his mind to hear anything.
The discussion that you just heard, far more than he's ever going to hear if I can tell
anything.
Because his mind is made up.
like concrete.
Permanent, thoroughly mixed up, permanently set.
I'm not going to give up on it.
But in order for us to appreciate the Bible, we have to hear it.
And those people who want to be critics of it, they need to be willing to defend their
position.
If they're not, their position means zero, nothing.
The things that I'm talking to you about just now are unassailable proofs of the
inspiration of the Bible.
And like I'm telling you, there's many of them.
I'm just giving you three, so let's go to the third one.
The third one will come to us from the book of Daniel.
The book of Daniel is remarkable.
It's remarkable in a number of ways.
Of course, it is a book that details the Babylonian captivity.
And the key characters of the book are the three Hebrew or four Hebrew youths, including
Daniel.
They'd be Daniel, Ananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, better known as Belteshahzar, Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego.
Now these men, young men, were made eunuchs and taken captive into Babylon.
I start drinking water, we'd be here all day.
Thank you, Brother Chris.
Observe in the book of Daniel with me, if you will.
Daniel's one of the minor prophets, or one of the major prophets, rather, and in regard to
Daniel as a major prophet, the time that he is writing, that he depicts, is equivalent
with the time of the Babylonian captivity.
So now we can get into a little bit of the dating of this book.
He's mentioning certain kings like Darius the Mede.
He's mentioning Nebuchadnezzar, people that are historical figures.
So we can see when they lived and we understand something about when Daniel wrote.
Now you and I know it's not critical to our understanding of the Bible to know these
dates, but it is helpful for us to place them in their time to understand what they were
going through and why Daniel was there.
The children of Israel were taken captive into Babylon for 70 years, according to
Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 25, 11, and 29, 10, because primarily of their idolatrous practices.
And they were taken there to be punished.
And thus, I reflect on the statement I just made about Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego were made eunuchs and placed in the king's palace.
That's punishment.
Now, in the book of Daniel, it is remarkable that Daniel will unfold
the history of the four world empires.
Imagine that.
Here's a man who's going to write about the four world empires that we know from history.
You read this in a history book.
And he's going to foretell this.
It will be important for me to establish that Daniel does write in the sixth century BC
and not in the second century BC as the critics say.
And I'll be glad to do that.
And I can prove that, prove positive.
But let's notice what we got.
Remember in Daniel chapter 2, where Daniel saw this vision?
A vision, or he didn't see the vision, King Nebuchadnezzar saw the vision and he forgot
the vision.
It was a troubling vision.
And he had brought the Hebrew youth in, the brightest and best from Judah, just as he had
done from other nations that he had conquered.
And he brought them together in what might be classified as an ancient think tank.
If he wanted to know something, these were the smartest men to do it.
Today you want to know something, you go to Google.
I told a friend of mine who's a mechanic, I said, I'm having trouble with my car, and I
Googled it, and it said it was this.
He said, what's Google?
I said, Google, you know Google.
You just put it on your computer, Google, and it'll tell you.
I don't know nothing about no Google.
And he said, Google can be wrong.
and mechanical problem I was having, guess what?
Google had it wrong.
So you can Google.
Doesn't mean you'll get the right answer, but you can Google.
It'll tell you something whether it's right or wrong.
Nebuchadnezzar was going to hear something.
He needed some basis of information for making decisions that impacted his nation.
And he was trying to be conscientious in that.
And he would appeal to the wise men.
And so he brings them together on this occasion when he's troubled about his dream.
As you remember, he said, I want you to tell me my dream and the interpretation thereof.
Well, those fellows couldn't do that.
They couldn't read somebody's mind.
And remember that Daniel steps forward.
And Daniel says, King, live forever.
I will give you the interpretation of this dream.
But I want you to know something.
This is Daniel 2.28.
The interpretation's not in me.
The interpretation will come from God.
There's a God in heaven that reveals secrets.
He will tell you the dream and the interpretation thereof.
Now, I've already answered the question, you know, I was going to put it to end right
here.
How did he know?
How did Daniel know?
Well, we already found out right here.
God was going to tell him.
Now, in this dream, you remember the terrible image?
The head was of gold.
And Daniel said, head of this terrible image, like that of a man, I picture a giant,
imposing, fearsome man-type figure.
The head was the head of gold.
And Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar, thou, O king, art this head of gold.
And he says, after thee shall other kingdoms come.
And he has a chest of silver, a torso of brass, feet and legs of brass, mixed with clay.
Four-part image.
and he commences to tell him about the Babylonian Empire.
We can put the dates on it.
606 to 536 BC.
He tells him after that another kingdom would arise and he describes the Medo-Persian
Empire.
You know he's right about that because in chapter 5 Darius the Mede takes over.
After that there would be a one who would rise swiftly to power and conquer the world.
And that's going to be Alexander the Great with the Greek Empire.
The year is 331 BC, all the way down to 63 BC.
Look how precise we're being.
That's because Daniel was precise in this prophecy.
Not only do you have it outlined here in chapter two, but also in chapter seven, and many
details in chapter 10, where the swift rise of Alexander the Great is mentioned in
prophetic language.
And then after that there would be a fourth kingdom, Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar.
And significant to you and me, and I'm sure this is where we've all heard about this,
is Daniel says in Daniel 2.44, in the days of these kings, the kings of that fourth
empire, that would be the Roman Empire, 63 BC to 138 AD and their power into 476 and their
existence.
In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be
destroyed and the remnant shall not be left to other people but it shall break in pieces
and consume all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever.
Daniel saw
four-world empire.
How do see it?
How do know?
God knew it.
God gave him the interpretation of that dream.
So if you'll notice this passage of scripture now, we see Daniel knew something way in
advance of it's happening.
And that proves the Bible's inspiration.
But as I told you a minute ago, and I'll close with this, we're going to have to show that
Daniel did write in the sixth century BC.
Because there have been people, even members of the Church of Christ, a book called God's
Holy Fire, published by the Abilene Christian University, with various authors, to say
Daniel wrote in the second century BC.
Not the sixth, but the second.
Well, that's no prophecy right after the fact.
And they don't believe in prophecy.
But yet they write about that and say, no, he wrote in the second century.
That would be in the 200s.
Let me tell you something.
We have scripture on this from Ezekiel 14 and 4 and 20, where Daniel is mentioned by the
exilic prophet Ezekiel.
What does that mean?
Daniel wrote during the period of the exile.
That's unquestioned.
Even the critics don't question that.
But who does Ezekiel mention?
He mentions Daniel.
If Daniel wasn't coming along for another 400 years, he'd be unable to mention Daniel.
He hadn't even born yet.
But he mentioned Daniel because he was there with him in that exile.
Also, outside the Bible, there is a translation of the Hebrew scriptures known as the
Septuagint.
It's a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
Guess when it was done?
258 BC.
That's third century.
258 BC.
Seventy scholars translated in the Library of Alexandria, Egypt.
The Hebrew text brought it into Greek.
Septuagint, I got a copy of it on my shelf at home.
Guess what book is in there?
We're being told Daniel wrote in the second century, so it can't be in the Septuagint.
It was translated from Hebrew in the third century.
But guess what?
Daniel stands right there where he does, like in your King James Bible.
How could Daniel write in the second century in his book be in the Septuagint?
It's being translated in 358 BC.
Proof that Daniel was an inspired prophet.
That's how you know.
So today we've seen that the Bible claims inspiration and we've given three proofs of it
so that we can have confidence that the Bible is the inspired word of God.
With that we begin our gospel meeting to talk about what does the Bible say.
In our next session we'll talk about what does the Bible say and we're going to talk about
what does the Bible say about the salvation which is in Christ.
Thank you for your attention.
I'll let Carl turn it back over to Carl and I'm gonna sit down and drink some of this nice
water brother Chris gave me and look forward to our next hour.
Brother Carl.