Inspiration of Scripture

Turn your attention to the back of your handout. I want to point out something real quick. We've done lesson one and lesson two on general revelation. We studied how God reveals Himself to us through both nature and in our conscience, and how general revelation tells us that there is a God and that He's holy and we're accountable to Him. But it doesn't tell us about the Savior, right? That's special revelation that Pastor Casey taught about last week, and tonight we'll be looking at the inspiration of Scripture, which is how we learn about special revelation and how it is in Scripture.

Next week we'll be looking at the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture. Caleb is going to be bringing the lesson next week — really looking forward to that. Following that, we'll be looking at the credibility and authenticity of Scripture. How reliable is it? What are our earliest documents? How many documents are there? We'll kind of be getting nerdy with some archaeology that week. Then the following week after that, Caleb is going to be teaching on canonicity of Scripture — how we chose or accepted what books to be in the Bible, what we call Scripture.

So I want to point this out: tonight and in the next three weeks, it's going to be really important if you do any apologetics, any witnessing to people and you're defending the faith. It's good to know what is Scripture and to have assurance that Scripture is inerrant. So I encourage you the next three weeks especially. Let's go ahead and look on the front. We'll be looking at the inspiration of Scripture tonight.

The first point that we're going to look at is number one: inspiration is the influence. That's the first blank. Inspiration is the influence of the Spirit of God on the minds of Scripture writers to accurately record divine revelation — that's the second blank — and to securely put the truth of God into permanent written form. Written is the third blank. So it's influence, record, and written.

Let me read that one more time. Inspiration is the influence of the Spirit of God on the minds of Scripture writers to accurately record divine revelation and securely put the truth of God into permanent written form. Over thirty years ago, I was in college, and when I wasn't at school, I was working at an automotive shop. I was trying to save up money to marry a sweet little southern girl. A man came in one afternoon. He was a well-known local public official and he made it his business to know everybody else's business. He said, "Mr. Parker, I hear that you're filling in at Lamar Baptist." And I said, "Yes, sir." They were between pastors, so I was filling in for a few weeks there. He says, "I hear that you're planning on going to Southeastern Seminary." I said, "Yes, sir. Next year I plan on going to Southeastern Seminary." And he winced.

He says, "Oh, don't go there. That's Paige Patterson's Seminary. He just took over." If you know any of the history of the SBC, Paige Patterson and a number of men led a conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s and in the 1990s. And we had our six seminaries — six Southern Baptist seminaries — who still to this day train about seventy percent of all United States pastors regardless of your denomination.

Well, they were teaching that the Word of God had errors in it. They were teaching that the Word of God was not the Word of God, that it was just a product of mere men. And so thankfully, those seminaries were turned around in a great way. And despite all the problems that some of these seminaries may have today, they still uniformly teach that this is God's Word, inspired by God, and it's inerrant, right? But that's the first taste I've ever had of a person confront me on that.

And he said, "I've been studying the Bible all my life." And he actually taught a large Bible study — it wasn't a small group. It was about one hundred people at a local church. He says, "I've been studying the Bible all my life, and the Scripture writers — they never intended their words to be written down and passed around. They were pastors just like you and me, trying to help people. They never intended it to be God's Word. They were human documents full of human errors."

Wow, my jaw just dropped when he said that to me. Inspiration teaches the exact opposite. The Bible is the Word of God. It is written by men under the influence of the Holy Spirit to record special revelation to be transmitted to us and to future generations.

Look at 2 Timothy 3:16. The first says, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." Does anyone's translation say something different than inspiration? God-breathed? Yes! The NIV was the first one to actually get that right almost fifty years ago, and now the LSB does that as well. And that's actually the best translation. To say it's inspired kind of misses it in the English.

When we think of inspiration in our modern context, we think of it as something that is put into us. Like maybe we take in an orchestra and we hear the beautiful music, or maybe we take in a sunset and we're inspired to write a song or write some poetry or whatever. But that's not what's being meant by the word inspired. It's a word that in the Greek — Paul probably coined it — literally means God-breathed. What it means is that its origin is from the lips of God.

All Scripture originates from the lips of God. It's breathed out from God. In the Old Testament, when you start to read it, you'll see many times, "Thus saith the Lord," right? Or it'll say, "And God said," right? Or "The Spirit of the Lord came upon this prophet," right? If you were to go through and count all those in the Old Testament, you'd probably find — what? Maybe seventy-five, one hundred, two hundred? How many instances of "Thus saith the Lord" or "God spoke" or "God said" do you think you would find in the Old Testament?

Over three thousand eight hundred. All throughout the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, you'll find the same thing. The Bible claims to be originated from the lips of God Himself.

The application is to hear God's Word rather than man's word. We have lots of things that we can turn our attention to — more channels on podcasts and YouTube than you can shake a stick at. But no one's words are inspired but the Word of Holy Scripture, right? They are God-breathed. They are what deserve our attention.

2 Peter, chapter 1, verse 19 through 21. Would someone read these three verses for us, please?

"And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."

It's a beautiful passage. This was a man who witnessed the Transfiguration. He's saying, we have the Word of God. And in verse 21, he says, "For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." The word moved can be translated as carried along by the Holy Spirit. In other words, these men were directed. They were animated. They were carried along. They were moved by the Spirit of God to record His own words.

If you flip over on the back, Acts chapter 27, verse 15, uses the same word. It refers to when Paul was being taken by ship to Rome, where he was going to be imprisoned and he would have a chance, hopefully, to witness to the rulers there in Rome. And when the ship was caught in it — speaking of a great northeasterly wind called Euraquilo, it was like a typhoon. The ship was running into this. It says, "And it could not face the wind, so we gave way to it and let ourselves be carried along." In other words, they weren't being pushed by their own rowing — they didn't have motors back then — but they were being carried along, pushed by this wind.

And in the same way, holy men of old were guided by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's guidance, His direction, is driving them, if you will. Jesus acknowledges this Himself.

Look at Matthew 22:41 through 46. It says, "While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, 'What do you think about the Christ, the Messiah? Whose Son is He?' They said to Him, 'The Son of David.' And He said to them, 'How then does David in the Spirit call Him Lord, saying,'" and He quotes Psalm 110, "'The Lord said to my Lord, sit at Your right hand till I make Your enemies Your footstool.' David wrote Psalm 110, and says, 'If David then calls Him Lord, how is He his Son?' And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore."

Jesus confounded the Pharisees here, but notice what He does in verse 43. He says, "How does David in the Spirit call Him Lord?" He's recognizing that David wrote Psalm 110 under the influence of the Holy Spirit, being driven under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 14, Paul talks about himself and his own word to the Corinthians. He says, "If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord's commandment. But if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized."

So even the writers of Holy Scripture recognized that what they were writing was the Word of God. This wasn't a happenstance that people later on said, "Well, this is pretty good advice that Paul was given here. Let's record this and say it's God's Word." They knew it from the very beginning, right?

Back on the front, Bible point number two: inspiration may include revelation. That's the first blank. Inspiration may include revelation or direct communication from God of truth, which men could not obtain by their own unaided powers. That's the second blank — unaided. The first blank is direct, the second is unaided. Inspiration may include revelation or direct communication from God of truth, which man could not obtain by his own unaided powers.

In other words, sometimes inspiration revealed to the writer, to the speaker, to the prophet, something that he would have had no clue of without this direct divine revelation. A great example of this is the book of Revelation itself. John writes in the very first verse. He says, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants things which must shortly take place, and He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John." He's saying everything that you're about to see here is revelation from Christ that was sent to His angel, and it was signified using symbolism all throughout the book of Revelation to put it in some kind of a context that we could understand.

And if you read the book of Revelation, there are things that are beyond our imagination, right? We read about the beast, and we read about Babylon the Great. We see the glimpse of the throne room of Heaven. Those are things that men have not been able to see except by the direct revelation of God.

The application is this: let your theology be grounded in the Word. Don't build your theology on speculation. If anyone begins to say, "Well, I think this way about God," turn a deaf ear to him, right? Let it be grounded in the inspired Word of God because we would not know God apart from His special revelation that He has revealed to us in Scripture.

Revelation 1:19. The angel tells John. He says, "Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this." He specifically told John to write this down — for whose benefit? For their benefit, but also for our benefit too, right?

Flip over on the back. Number two there on the back, you'll see the reference. Mark number two is Revelation chapter 1, verse 10 through 12. John says, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet saying, 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. And what you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.'"

Revelation, recorded in Scripture, is for the Church. These were not symbolic things. These were real churches, and this Word would have encouraged them in a time of turmoil, definitely. So we need to go to God's revelation for encouragement, right?

Bible point number three: inspiration may include illumination. That's the first blank. Inspiration may include illumination by which man's cognitive powers are quickened by God's Spirit to understand truth already revealed. That's the second blank — to understand. Inspiration may include illumination by which man's cognitive powers are quickened by God's Spirit to understand truth already revealed.

What this means is this: just as John received a vision of Heaven that he would have never been able to come up with on his own, right, not all Scripture is direct communication that we would never be able to gather on our own. Sometimes God used things that you already knew, that you had already learned from, say, the Old Testament, and allows you to understand them, provides you with illumination.

Part of this is perfectly modeled in the Apostle Paul. Let's look at Galatians chapter 1, verse 12 through 14. "But I make known to you, brethren, that the Gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers."

When you read through Philippians and you get to chapter 3, Paul talks about how he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, how he was more zealous than everybody else, and he had learned so much of the traditions and so much of the law. "But those things that I counted as gain, now I count as loss, right? Because now I've received something better. I've received Christ Jesus, my Lord."

But didn't Jesus use that knowledge? Wasn't that part of Paul's preparation that he could explain the Gospel so well? Because what does the Bible tell us? When he wrote Romans, Paul says that the Old Testament law was a schoolmaster, a guardian to lead us to Christ, right? And so God can take things that you've already learned about God in Scripture to create new Scripture — not talking about us, but the Scripture writers, okay? So God would illuminate Paul's understanding of the Old Testament, and that aided him in being able to deliver letters in the New Testament, okay?

The application is this: God ordained all things to reveal His Son. The first blank is ordained, the second blank is Son. The application is God ordained all things to reveal His Son. It wasn't an accident that Paul had the education, the heritage, and the background that he had. That was God-ordained.

Galatians 1 continues in 15 and 16. "But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through His grace to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood." He recognized that he had been set apart to proclaim Christ and to preach Christ and Christ crucified.

Flip over on the back. In Acts chapter 22, you find Paul — I believe it's before Festus, if I recall right — giving his testimony. I'd encourage you on your own time to read through Acts 22. If you are ever going to give your testimony when you witness to someone, Paul provides an excellent model for it. So many times we give our testimonies all wrong. We spend so much time talking about the person that we used to be, and we almost glorify our sin and ourselves, right?

But what Paul does, he says just a few words about his past life, how he was lost, but then he focuses on what God did, how God miraculously found him, and what God is now doing through his life. Very succinct, very brief, but as a way to provide an easier means of identification, so he could bring them the Gospel. And when he gives his testimony, it says in verses 3 through 4, "I am indeed a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel." Gamaliel was an extremely wise rabbi. If you studied at his feet, they said that would have been the equivalent of having a PhD. So he was super educated. "He was taught according to the strictness of our fathers' law." So he had one of the best teachers you could imagine in the law. He was taught the strictest way possible to follow the law.

So he knew the law — all six hundred-some-odd laws that we find listed in Exodus 19 through 24. He says, "taught according to the strictness of our fathers' law and was zealous towards God as you all are today." In fact, he says in verse 4, "I persecuted the way" — which is a way of saying the Christians, or Christ — "to death, binding and delivering to prisons both men and women." That was a man who was, before he met Christ.

But did not God use that as he wrote Scripture, right? Paul wrote thirteen epistles, and you can see his knowledge of the law and you can see his love for the Savior on every single page that he wrote.

Flip up on the front again. Bible point number four: inspiration may not always include revelation or illumination. So the first blank is include. Inspiration may not always include revelation or illumination. Inspiration can be simple divine influence, which secures the transmission of needed truth to future recipients. That's the third blank — future.

Let me read that again. Inspiration may not always include revelation or illumination. Inspiration can be simple divine influence, which secures the transmission of the needed truth to future recipients. Think about Luke.

When you think of the New Testament writers, who's the majority writer of the New Testament? You're wrong actually. Let me tell you why you're wrong, okay? It's natural to think Paul. He wrote thirteen epistles, right? If you don't give Hebrews to Paul — because Hebrews is unsigned and it doesn't sound at all like Paul at the very beginning, though he does a lot at the end. It's kind of a debate who wrote it. There are different theories there. But when you look at the total word count, Luke, a Gentile, wrote more of the New Testament than anybody else because he wrote the book of Acts as well.

And Luke and Acts taken together is the majority of the New Testament. There are more words there than all thirteen epistles of Paul, okay? Isn't it something that God would use a Gentile, and would use a man who's a doctor, who's very keen and very observant, to be able to record His truth so it can be transmitted to future generations?

Look in Luke 1, verses 1 through 4. His preface to the Gospel of Luke. He says, "Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us" — speaking of the other Gospels such as Matthew, Mark, and John. He says, "just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us." Verse 3: "it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first" — which means a very studied understanding of things. Luke was a man who would have interviewed these witnesses. He would have taken very good notes. He says, "to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed."

Luke took it upon himself to provide an orderly account that we may know the certainty of the life, words, and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. For those of you who homeschool, an encouraging thing you may want to do with your children is to look up a man named Sir William Ramsay. This isn't in your notes. This is just extra. Sir William Ramsay. Sir William Ramsay was born in the mid-1850s, a very bright young man. When other kids were out playing, he was studying Sanskrit, which is an ancient, dead language. By the time he got to college, he was doing so well. He went to the University of Aberdeen at Edinburgh, Scotland, also went to Oxford and Exeter — just a brilliant guy.

Upon graduation, at only twenty-two or twenty-three, he got a full three-year funding to go and dig around the Middle East. Now when he was in theological school, he was influenced by what we call the Tübingen school, a German train of thought that we call higher criticism. And these higher critics — what they looked at Scripture and said was that Scripture was not possibly written by the people whose names bear their authorship on these letters and these epistles. It was actually written much later. Luke's account of Acts had been written in the second and third century. They figured maybe Paul wrote two or three of his thirteen epistles, but certainly not all of them. They were later written by other people. They tried to explain away any of the miraculous nature of Scripture. They would say things such as, "Jesus walking on the water" — I don't want to pervert your faith, but they'd say he walked in shallow water and he knew where the stones were.

When He fed the five thousand, they said he had a cistern down there filled with bread, and a disciple down there in a basket with a hole in it, passing bread up through the basket, and that's how he performed this miracle. Just anything to deny Scripture. And that's the way Ramsay was trained. He was not what we would call a Christian who had a high view of God's Word. And so when he started out on this three-year journey through the Middle East, he was very skeptical of Scripture, but he kept turning to Luke's account of the Gospel and of Acts and found that everything ended up collaborating and confirming what Luke had written.

This man was brilliant. He discovered the oldest complete piece of music. He discovered an entire language that had never been found before, via inscriptions. He discovered several giant obelisks, different monuments, a wide variety of things. By the time he was said and done, in his later years, he wrote a book on the travels of Saint Paul because he retraced all of Paul's missionary journeys at all the Roman sites.

And this is what he said. This is pretty amazing to hear from a man of his caliber. He says, "I may fairly claim to have entered into this investigation without any prejudice in favor of the conclusion which I now attempt to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavorable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent completeness the Tübingen theory had at one time quite convinced me." Now that was the theory again that these were not written by the stated people — that these were human documents, full of human errors.

He says, "I found myself often brought into contact with the book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne in upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth. Luke is a historian of the first rank. Not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy. He is possessed of true historic sense, and this author should be placed among the greatest of historians."

He published that in 1896, and the academic world was irate at him because one of their own had turned, so to speak. He actually retired from the University of Aberdeen at Edinburgh as the Regius Professor because he was appointed by the King of England. So he was a very incredible scholar, but everything that he looked at in Scripture only confirmed — because again, inspiration doesn't have to be something like a vision of John in the Apocalypse, so to speak. It doesn't have to be taking prior knowledge of the Old Testament. It can be something as simple as Luke gathering firsthand, eyewitness accounts and recording them.

You know, remember Luke was with Paul on his missionary journeys. That's how he was able to give such a good account of those journeys, right? I mentioned when we studied the nature and attributes of God that there's a very good video you should look up when you have a chance if you haven't already. It's done by Voddie Baucham. It's on YouTube. It's called "Why I Choose to Believe the Bible," and it's a terrific outline that he gives. And he basically says this: he says something to the effect of, "I choose to believe the Bible is the Word of God," and he says this because it's a reliable collection of historical documents that were written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses who record supernatural events that take place in fulfillment of specific prophecies. And the authors of these books did not claim human authorship but divine authorship. And that's what we find with Scripture, right?

The application is: God's Word is true, trustworthy, and mighty. The first blank is true, the second blank is trustworthy, the third blank is mighty. Paul writes to the Thessalonian church. He says, "For this reason we also thank God without ceasing because when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as a word of man but as it is in truth the Word of God, which also effectively, powerfully works in you who believe."

Bible point number five: inspiration secures the transmission of truth that the original writers — that's the first blank, the original — operating under the influence of the Holy Spirit, didn't always fully comprehend. The second blank is fully comprehend. Inspiration secures the transmission of truth that the original writers operating under the influence of the Holy Spirit didn't always fully comprehend.

Look at 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 10 and 11. Would someone read 10 and 11 for us please?

Amen, sister. Isn't that beautiful? Listen to verse 11. He says, "Searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow." So he's talking about the Old Testament prophets. Who were they testifying of? It says of Christ and the glories that would follow, right? And they were indicating beforehand because the Spirit of Christ was in them, and they didn't fully understand. They greatly searched and they looked forward to the coming Messiah.

But when you read through the Old Testament, remember we see types and shadows. Their faith looked forward to what the Messiah would do. But we stand on this side of the cross. We look back and we see it in its full glory, right? What Christ has done, what Christ has accomplished. And we have the benefit of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament helping explain what these Old Testament writers were speaking of when they spoke of Christ. These prophecies may have seemed vague or even veiled to them, but we praise God we are able to see it in its fullness.

The application is to approach Scripture with humble gratitude. Humble gratitude. Those are the two blanks there. And the reason why we approach Scripture with humble gratitude is because it was written — both the Old and the New Testament — for us, to reveal the love of God to us, to reveal Christ Jesus to us.

Look at verse 12, 1 Peter 1:12. "To them it was revealed, not to themselves but to us. They were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the Gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven — things which angels desire to look into." Not only did the prophets desire to look into these things, but even the angels desire to look into the mystery of Christ, right? And that's something that we get to see with our eyes wide open here in the New Testament.

I'll give you an example. Flip over on the back. On the day of Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, we find the Holy Spirit came with a rushing, mighty wind. By the way, it's the same word that we looked at in point one when it says that these holy men were moved or driven by the Holy Spirit, carried by the Spirit. The rushing, mighty wind is the same word. And they began to speak in tongues — languages. People from sixteen different nationalities on that day who were in Jerusalem heard the Gospel in their own language. It wasn't gibberish. It was actually speaking known languages, and the hearers recognized it and they glorified God.

Peter responds to this in Acts chapter 2. He gives this great sermon. It says, "But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, 'Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and heed my words, for these are not drunk as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.'" He's saying, "This, what you're seeing here — these men speaking languages that they don't know to you so you can understand the Gospel — this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel."

And he begins to quote from Joel chapter 2. Okay, now if you know the book of Joel, it's a lovely book. In Joel chapter 1, Joel the prophet has told them that they are experiencing drought and also a plague of locusts and that they need to repent, that they are drinking in iniquity. And then in chapter 2, he tells them an army from the north is going to be sent by God against them.

And some scholars think that may be another way of speaking about the locusts because he describes this army under the figure of locusts — whether it's locusts or whether it's an actual invading army, it doesn't matter. What matters is that God was sending this devastation to them unless they repent. Thank God, graciously, He tells them if you repent, you'll be spared. "I will restore what the locusts have eaten. I will make your place green again." He says, "Rend your heart and not your garments." He says, "Get right with me," is what He's saying.

And here Peter quotes that. He says, "But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel," verses 17 through 21. He quotes this: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions. Your old men shall dream dreams. And on My menservants and on My maidservants, I will pour out My Spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs in the earth beneath — blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

So he's quoting Joel. We often think of the day of the Lord as Christ coming back, but in the Old Testament, the day of the Lord was a day of deliverance for God's people and a day of judgment for God's enemies. And the first hearers of Joel, what they were expecting was this: they're like, "If we repent, God's going to stay His judgment. He's not going to judge us. He's going to deliver us from this pestilence, and our daughters and our sons are going to prophesy. What a great blessing this will be if we repent, right?"

Well, now Peter is saying, "This is what was spoken of by the prophet Joel." He is taking something that Joel probably wouldn't have even understood the entire context of when he delivered that prophecy. The Old Testament prophets didn't understand the full import of everything that they said. Peter is saying this is applying to us in the New Testament. He's saying God has delivered us. God has brought restoration through Jesus Christ. And what you're seeing here is the fruit of that restoration. The new covenant is now breaking out, and now your sons and your daughters are prophesying just as Joel had said of Israel.

So this brings us back to the first page, point five: approach Scripture with humble gratitude. The original writers, operating under the influence of the Holy Spirit, didn't always fully comprehend the full import of what they were declaring.

And then number six: inspiration assures us that all Scripture is profitable. So three blanks: assures, all, and profitable. Inspiration assures us that all Scripture is profitable. Because all Scripture is from the lips of God, it is therefore all profitable, all valuable to us. That's what Timothy says. He says, "All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

When you read apologetics or you read theology and you read about inspiration, you may find a phrase that says that we believe in verbal, plenary inspiration. That's a big phrase. It sounds like a medical term, but what that simply means is that God didn't just inspire the ideas. He inspired the very words that were written down. And when we say plenary, it means that He inspired all of the words that are written down. In other words, you can't come to God's Word cafeteria style and pick what you like. You can't come to Ephesians 5 — "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it" — and then when Paul says you're going to be laying down your life every day, that's part of loving your wife, loving your family, you're called to lay down your life, say, "Well, you know, I don't like that. Didn't Jesus say, 'Come to me, take my yoke and learn of me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light'? Well, I'm going to go with Jesus' words. I'm going to throw out Paul's words here because Paul must have just misunderstood, right?"

Well, inspiration says you can't do that. Every part of Scripture, every challenge of Scripture, is for us, right? It is all written. And therefore, it's all profitable if we interpret it within its context. It's all profitable for doctrine, for encouragement, and for righteousness, right? The application is to continue to abide in God's Word. That's the last blank — abide. John 8:31 through 32. You know this well because you've gone through next steps. Jesus said to those Jews who believed, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

Flip up on the back. We're going to close with 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 13. Paul writes to Timothy, "Till I come, give attention to reading" — that's a public reading of Scripture, it's what we do every Sunday here — "to exhortation" — which is preaching and or encouragement — "and to doctrine" — that's teaching, right? Because our teaching, our preaching, our reading is all going to be based on God's inspired Word, right?