in this session what we want to do is complete our analysis of and application of to our own lives the westminster catechism's answer to how can we know that the bible is god's word we've just dealt really in quite an extended way just because it was so big in my own experience with the statement that the scope of the whole is the glory of god and why from john 7 and john 5 and romans 1 and our experience of the natural world all of that causes us when we open and immerse ourselves in this book
to say this is it this is the explanation this coheres with who i am and what i have seen now the last words in that answer of westminster is this by their light and power that is the word of god by their light and power to convince the scriptures by the scriptures light and power to convince and convert sinners to comfort and build up believers unto salvation i'm going to pass over some of these because i want to get right to the main ones as i've experienced them so this is a jp text that's me
second corinthians 4 4-6 i think comes close to and there's one other one explaining what that means so that it works for me in their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelieving of the unbelieving that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of christ who is the image of god so what satan tries to keep from happening is the seeing of a certain kind of light it's the light of the gospel so it's not a physical light this is troubling because it may suddenly feel like
whoa that's kind of outside my experience a light that you can't see with your physical eyes because it's not a material physical kind of light it's the light of the gospel and that gospel is the gospel of the glory the radiance the outshining of christ as the image of god what that's saying is that when the gospel is faithfully preached when you tell the story of jesus christ perfect man god man dying for sins in your place rising again from the dead conquering death conquering hell conquering sin conquering satan being exalted to god's right hand
all according to the scriptures testified to by eyewitnesses when you tell that story faithfully paul's saying there's a light and it's the light of a magnificent person that shines out and the heart sees it unless satan is blinding the heart and if you see it you know it's true it's like is that light on up there shining me right in the face causing me not to be able to see you so well is that light on i said is it on somebody put a gun to my side so how do you know it's on i
see it's on you just that's the way light works and so there's an immediacy in the gospel that vindicates itself according to this text verse 5 4 we do not preach ourselves but jesus christ as lord and ourselves as your bond servants for jesus sake and then verse 6 parallels verse 4 for god who said light shall shine out of darkness the original bringing into existence light is the one who has shown in our hearts so that's how this light happens for us fallen blind creatures this is the new birth happening here i believe he
has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of god in the face of christ so that's how you come to credit the gospel the gospel is preached to you billy graham does it or somebody does it on the radio or you read a tract or you're reading your bible or you go to church on sunday or you go to an apologetic seminar at the university and god does that the god who said let light shine out of darkness shines in your heart to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of god in the face of christ it's a self-authenticating kind of glory that you see written across that story that cannot be accounted for any other way which is why i don't think it's irrational jonathan edwards argues in his sermon uh divine and supernatural light immediately imparted to the soul if you've never read that sermon you want to know more about what i'm saying here get jonathan edward sermon you can find it online just type that into google and it'll come up a divine and supernatural light immediately imparted to the soul he
argues it's rational meaning there is real reason for believing the gospel we're just blind to it and you can see it and it is self evidencing just like there's real reason for me to believe that that lights on up there there's real reason to believe that there's a light on in the gospel you just have to see it with the eyes of your heart which are designed by god to see glory if they weren't so blinded by satan and our own sin let me refer to this one just because it's right off the front burner
of my preaching right now and i'm going to do it again tonight and carry us forward into john 1. first peter talking about the new birth you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable that is through the living and abiding word of god this is the word which was preached to you the good news that was preached to you this gospel that word right there preached as young galizimi which means this is the gospel so what that is saying is when this story the gospel is told in the power of
the holy spirit new birth happens for people new birth means that a miracle takes place and one of the marks of the miracle is that light dawns and you see things as irresistibly true and attractive that you didn't see before and you embrace the gospel so what westminster is saying when it argues that by the scriptures light and power to convince and convert sinners we know that it's the word of god that's what i'm arguing now from first peter 1 23 and second corinthians 4 4 that this light and power to convert means there is
a miracle that happens when the gospel is faithfully preached and we are enabled to see authentic self-vindicating light and glory in the person of jesus christ and frankly that may sound kind of weird as the foundation of your faith in the bible but it isn't if somebody asks you i mean he's just you should have a short answer ready a long answer and a short answer a short answer why do you believe this stuff somebody asked you why are you one of those born-again types why do you believe this stuff one short answer would be
something like this i hope i hope this is real for you you would say when i read the story of jesus in the gospels of how he lived and what he said and what he did and how he died and how he rose when i read that he wins my trust i can't reject him he wins my trust i think i think the person talking to you will not despise that answer because if they do you could we could come back to him and say you know how do you come to trust somebody uh how
did you get to trust your wife or how did you get to trust and their answers there's no mathematical answer to that there's no historical argument there's just well i've i watched her i i dated her i i looked at her from a lot of angles and that's the way i feel about the apostle paul i have spent so many hundreds of hours talking to this guy mainly listening but i talk back a lot i can't regard paul as a buffoon i i just can't i can't read that's what i feel about jesus i say
no man created what's here i know it's nice to develop arguments for the validity and reliability of the synoptic gospels and johannine writings and so on but in the end the story as it reads in the bible wins me i think that's what they're getting at there let me go to the last part of the westminster answer but the spirit of god this is the big but remember all those are reasons for why you should believe the bible is true but this one but the spirit of god bearing witness by and with the scriptures in
the heart of man is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very word of god what does that mean and i'm gonna i'm gonna go to calvin here and unpack his doctrine because i think they were influenced by him and and i think that's okay i think he's right in what he says the spirit of god bearing witness so this is what's called the internal testimony of the holy spirit bring us to believe that the bible is the very word of god so here's my little section on john calvin's doctrine of the
internal testimony it's going to work is that okay to do it one notch brighter here's what he says the problem with relying on the church a most pernicious error widely prevails that scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church so in his day he regarded that as a pernicious error i would guess that that error is still abroad today as if the eternal and inviolable truth of god depended upon the decision of men yet if this is so what will happen to miserable consciences seeking firm assurance
of eternal life if all promises of it consist in and depend upon the judgment of men that's his dilemma if you don't base it on the judgment of the church what will you base it on that's what he's trying to answer here how shall we know his answer the internal testimony of the spirit here's what he means the testimony of the spirit is more excellent than all reason for as god alone is a fit witness of himself in this word in his word the word will not find acceptance in men's hearts before it is sealed
by the inward testimony of the spirit the same spirit therefore who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded because until he illumines their minds they ever waver among many doubts now the crew the crucial question here is what is what how is how does he do this how does the holy spirit persuade us of the truth of scripture so he keeps going let this point therefore stand that those whom the holy spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon
scripture and that scripture indeed is self-authenticated now be sure you get this the testimony of the holy spirit he's going to argue is not added information about the bible if i say seek the full experience of the testimony of the holy spirit to the truth of the word of god that does not mean go into the woods leave your bible at home and ask the holy spirit to tell you that the bible is true that is exactly not what the testimony of the holy spirit is it is not a second revelation like here we've got
the revelation of the bible and here i've got words coming from the holy spirit like words of prophecy or words of wisdom or words of knowledge and they're coming and they're saying the bible's true bible's true pick it up and read it that's not the case that's really pulling rank on the holy spirit in the word that's not what calvin means that's not what i would mean he's saying that when the holy spirit testifies to you it does so by illumining the word as self-authenticating that's why i use this word here hence it is not
right to subject it to proof and reasoning even though he has a whole section on the secondary values of argument and historical reasoning it's not subject finally to that and the certainty it derives deserves with us it attains by the testimony of the spirit for even if it wins reverence for itself by its own majesty it seriously affects us only when it is sealed upon our hearts through the spirit therefore illumined by this power illumined to see what's really there by this power we believe neither by our own this is amazing neither by our own
or anyone else's judgment that scripture is from god that right there is a most remarkable statement we do make judgments but he's arguing that the the witness of the spirit that is the effect that the spirit has in making us able to see what is really there this is what i'm talking about in second corinthians 4 4 the light of the knowledge of the glory of god in the face of christ to see what's really there that is so immediate that he says it's not by virtue of any long train of arguments formed by our
judgment but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of god himself looking at the light that light is on i'm not reasoning about that light being on i'm not concluding there's a little bit of a pain on the retina of my eye i think that's only cause when lights are on ergo that light is on i'm not doing that i'm just saying it's on and he says that's the way the heart sees the glory of god in the bible in the gospel that it has flowed
to us from the very mouth of god by the ministry of men we seek no proofs no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean even though he gives lots of those that's not the immediate final decisive work of the spirit but we subject our judgment and wit to it as to a thing far beyond any guesswork this we do not as persons accustomed to seize upon some unknown thing which under closest scrutiny displeases them but fully conscious that we hold the unassailable truth one last paragraph on that would continue this is all in
the institutes book 1 chapter 7 here so if you want to follow up on this you can read that chapter 7 right there is the key section in the institutes nor do we do this as those miserable men who habitually bind over their minds to the thraldom of superstition but we feel that the undoubted power of his divine majesty lives and breathes there there in the bible it's there we see it there by this power we are drawn and inflamed knowingly and willingly to obey him yet also more vitally and more effectively than by mere
human willing or knowing the immediate sight of god's reality in the word this is still kevin just switching the order around how can we be assured that this has sprung from god unless we have recourse to the decree of the church it is as if someone asked whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness white from black sweet from bitter indeed scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color or sweet and bitter things do of their taste now i'm going to give you j.i
packers restatement of all that view and then we're going to go to a text in the bible that i think teaches just what we've seen so you don't think well this is just calvin's speculations but we'll go to a text so here's packers interpretation of the inward witness of calvin calvin's view of it calvin affirms scripture to be self-us authenticating so he's picked up on that phrase that we saw self-authenticating through the inner witness of the spirit so don't let calvin packer or piper be interpreted as saying the witness of the spirit to your reality
or the bible's reality yours in romans 8 or the bibles we're going to see in first john as being an extra message sent to you about the bible like you got two ways of being conscious one i read my bible and the other i listen to the spirit and when the spirit says believe the bible then i go back with confidence if you if you go about it that way you will be disillusioned big time and you'll probably become a heretic because you will be open to all kinds of messages coming from outside the bible
and you'll be distorting the bible because that little message is going to tell you what the bible means over and over again and the people who see it not in the bible are going to try to tell you it's not in the bible and you won't listen to them because you got this other message going that's where all sex and heresies come from so packers onto that and i think that's right self-authenticating through something the spirit does to enable you to see what's really there what is this inner witness not a special quality of experience
nor a new private revelation nor an existential decision but a work of enlightenment whereby through the medium of verbal testimony the blind eyes of the spirit are opened my spirit the spirit less the blind eyes of the spirit are open and divine realities come to be recognized and embraced for what they are this recognition calvin says is as immediate and unanalyzable as the perceiving of a color or a taste by physical sense an event about which no more can be said than when appropriate stimuli were present it happened and when it happened we know it
happened now that might unsettle you because you might say i've i've never thought about my experience of the bible that way i've never thought about my experience of the gospel that way don't panic god does this for the simplest of people it can happen to a six-year-old he couldn't begin to articulate what has happened and unless he's well taught as he grows up 12 18 28 he'll never articulate what happened because he's so badly taught i don't know where you are in how you've been taught about how did you come to believe but but there
will come a point there should come a point maybe it's right now where you will have to say uh i've never even analyzed why i came to believe i just remember believing when i was little and and i've always taken the bible to be so and that's not a bad thing provided there's reality there and this is just a way of putting a a template on your experience to see can you can you think this through to the bottom i had to do that i had to i had to think now is that my experience
of the bible is that why i have never from age 6 to 62 having walked through unbelievable challenges to my faith in various schools and experiences in germany and people confronting me and and people mocking my view has my inability to walk away from this simply owing to tradition and stubbornness or has god opened my eyes to see what i can't turn away from whatever name you put on it i just can't walk away from the jesus i've seen in the gospels and i think if you're born again you will have the same experience if
you let yourself just think about what happened to you now the text first john 5 7 to 11 where does john calvin get all this stuff where should you go to the bible to argue that what i've just said in the last 10 minutes is biblical and here is probably the most important text though there are others in fact i think the ones from first peter 1 and second corinthians 4 are very pertinent to this issue but this one uses the word testimony of the spirit so let's go here first john 5 7-11 and it
is the spirit who bears witness because the spirit is the truth so there you have the witness of the spirit so what is he talking about for there are three that bear witness the spirit the water the blood very perplexing perhaps this part referring to the spirits coming to jesus at his baptism and the water being his submission to all righteousness and water baptism and blood being his crucifixion perhaps i'm i'm not sure about the full scope of verse eight that's my inclination what i just said there and these three are in agreement so his
life from his call baptism and death his whole life is a testimony if we receive the witness of men which we do the witness of god is greater so now we have it again witness of god for the witness of god is this that he has born witness concerning his son so the witness that he has in mind is a witness about christ that he's real that he's true that he's who he says he is the one who believes in the son of god so believing now comes in the one who believes in the son
of god has the witness in himself i think that means if you have been brought to faith in its authentic faith in jesus the reason is because you have the witness of god functioning in your life the holy spirit has done something the spirit has borne witness in a way that you have yielded to his authority to the authority of jesus in the gospel and you've recognized the son and you've believed in him you have the witness in yourself the one who does not believe god has made him a liar because he has not believed
in the witness that god has born concerning his son this verse is very important verse 11 and the witness is this that god has given us eternal life and this life is in his son now just think about that with me for a minute does that fit with what calvin is saying the witness what witness well probably the witness concerning his son the witness of the spirit the witness of god all same witness the witness is this that god has given us eternal life and the life is in his son if you have the son
you have life here's what i think that means if you ask me what is the witness of the spirit in your life that the son of god is who he says he is my answer is i'm alive this is the witness that he has given me life eternal life from the dead the witness is i see him i'm alive i was dead and in my deadness i was in rebellion i was in blindness he was boring to me foolish to me disinterested i wanted to write websites like i read last night and doing some research
i don't even want to tell you the name of this website there are more websites out there than you know that hate the bible and are bent on destroying the bible and i found one and the whole website is to undermine the bible contradictions and and lies and so on about the bible i mean that it says the bible commits that's who i was that person said for example here's a lie in the bible whatever you ask believe that you have it and you'll have it and then he adds try praying that i'll become a
christian in five minutes and you'll see that's a lie that's the kind of anger there is out there toward the bible and towards christianity and that's who i was and then something happened and i i saw i saw the gospel differently i saw the glory of christ differently i saw the crucifixion not as foolishness in the stumbling block but as the wisdom of god what was that what happened what was the testimony the testimony wasn't the gospel is true change your mind that's not what happened life was given and the heart that was dead and
rebellious and hostile and indifferent now was alive to spiritual things the new birth happened the call of god happened the illumination of the holy spirit happened the internal testimony of the spirit opened my eyes to see what's really there and i can't not not believe did i say that right too many knots no i there was one too many i can't not believe no you know what i mean if i keep working at it i'll really mess it up i must believe so i think this text does in fact bear witness to what calvin was
trying to explain in the internal testimony of the spirit that in the end so here i'm giving you my bottom line answer to all of you non-historians non-scholars who got to stake your life on whether the bible and the gospel at the center is true it's going to come down to this as you look at the world know yourself think about reality and then expose yourself to the story of the bible does the spirit remove blindness so that you see self-authenticating beauty and truth there that's really there scholars have to spend their lives trying to
unpack it in objective argumentation and i am thanking god for them because there were key phases in my life where i just had to have some of those answers given for why these two texts weren't a contradiction but but that solution didn't make me a believer because some other smarter guy going to come along with a phd at the university and he's going to bring me another problem and then my faith is all up for grabs again and i can't live that way i have to have access to god's truth in a more reliable firm
way than whether the latest phd is on my side it always feels good to have a real good scholar writing a book to defend your point but then another book comes out five years later you know i was saying to nathan last night as we were driving home in the car it is so good to be 62 maybe even better be 82 because you've seen so much come and go and right now we're all up in the air with bart ehrman about text criticism and whatnot guess what 15 years he'll never be heard of again
how many of you remember i doubt that a single hand is going to go up the passover plot one two three okay good these older folks the passover plot here i am junior in college and this jewish guy i forget his name now wrote the passover plot the big expose about how jesus did not die on the cross it was everywhere on the news breathless media attention and i had to write a paper on it in millard erickson's apologetics class at wheaton college and everybody was talking about the book you never heard of it it's
just totally gone and so will everything else it's good to be old you just watch them come let you go it's like these peashooters against the sherman tank of the bible the media look at that p look at it the bible just it has really it's just there like a relic gibraltar so i i hope that you don't uh get shaken to the foundations with the latest attack maybe one other comment about that thank god for liberalism everett harrison said because by its very nature liberalism is self-correcting for this reason conservatism means people are comfortable
with conserving old true things and they don't feel any impulse to be new just if they've seen something and it's old and it's true let's conserve it that's conservatism liberalism means generally you gotta have new stuff well what a wonderful thing because that means they'll always reject the old write something new but then guess what in 20 years what's old the new is old and so liberal scholars must always deny what liberal scholars in the previous generation said otherwise they become conservatives they conserve the error of 30 years ago and they don't want to become
conservatives and so they find creative ways to say that bulma and and bruner and bart and caseman all the liberals are well bart wasn't exactly neo-orthodox that that's just we got new ways to deal with this so so dr harrison said in our course on paul at fuller he said just be patient because even if you don't have the time to write a book in response to this liberal denial of the bible some liberal will deny it eventually because it's going to be conservative within 20 or 30 years and no liberal wants to be conservative
that was very liberating to me and made me a more patient person um that's all i want to say about step number five as to why we credit the bible and please let me remind you again it isn't the whole story there's so many more ways to go about crediting the bible but that's the one that i live with most existentially now we have 12 or so minutes left and i am going to uh tackle and see if we can do it some comments about the uh meaning of the bible's inerrancy so that you don't
say the bible has errors in places where it doesn't i'm just going to draw your attention to a few places or the kinds of things that i mean what what do i mean when i say or when the bethlehem affirmation of faith says we believe that the bible is the word of god fully inspired without error what does without error mean here's what i'm going to say it means it means the bible is without error in the sense that all that the biblical authors intended to teach is true and does not conflict with reality or
with the will of god so let me unpack that little phrase for just a few minutes what do i mean by intended a writer should not be accused of error because someone construes his words in a way the writer does not intend the meaning of a text is not what anyone can construe from the words but what the writer intends for the language to teach for example if i say to a friend in detroit i'll be there at 10 a.m meaning eastern standard time meaning that intending that and he construes the meaning of my words
to be 10 a.m central standard time i have not heard if i arrive an hour earlier than expected i may have been unclear but i was not wrong so the meaning of a writer should not be considered false just because the words could be used to express error to me this is basic common sense if you write a letter to somebody a love letter or a contract letter or whatever and they take you to mean what you didn't mean and then they use some hermeneutical mumbo-jumbo to say language is open-ended i can make it mean
whatever i want that's why i read poetry that's why i'll read your letter you will feel offended you will feel like you didn't treat me the way you'd like to be treated because if i said i wouldn't and you said wouldn't here means would i you can't do that and a person might say well i can too so i'm just saying common sense says do unto others as you would have them do unto you means when i write try to figure out what i meant don't say oh it could mean think what did it mean
i mean give me the break try to get at my intention that's an honorable kind loving thing to do and i'm just saying do that with the bible as well why do i say teach inherent things are inerrant in that this intention to teach is not in error the word teach reinforces this point by applying that a writer implying that a writer might say things which he is not teaching for example i may say to my son pick your mother up at the town square now my teaching is that he should get his mother at
the place known as the town square i am not teaching that he should lift her off the ground even though i said pick your mother up in his arms nor am i teaching that the town square is the same length on all four sides even though i said square if the town square is a hundred feet by 105 i have not heard and if my son never touches his mother but brings her home from there he has not disobeyed both the word intended and the word teach are meant to protect a writer from accusation of
error when there is none that's the way language works some implications for reading scripture accurate descriptions of natural events as what one simply sees are not scientific errors the sun rises in the east is not a scientific error it's a matter of observation joshua 10 13 so the sun stood still and the moon stopped until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies the point there is not to teach a world view that has the earth static and the sun doing this that's not the point the point is all of them were watching and it stopped
that's what the point was so don't it just it would just be so contrary to the bible's intentions for you to say not scientifically accurate sun doesn't stop earth stops rotating even if you believe in the miracle well revelation 6 13 the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree cast its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind you can see a scientist saying do you know how big one star is billion times bigger than the earth they don't fall to the earth like grapes so is this a big mistake
no because the word star is a picture for heavenly bodies that are up there and and when they start falling a meteor shower they're falling this is no no no really honest person would want to come to text like this and say that god for seeing some astonishing falling to the ground of heavenly bodies and they don't these these writers did not know what we know scientifically and they're just using the word stars to describe all the things out there that you see whether they're a planet or a star or meteors they don't know what
a meteor is boom there they come so i'm i'm arguing that what you see can be described and doesn't have to be described in scientific language that accords with what we know today a second one would be idiomatic exaggerations are not errors scared me to death would be ours i will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore are there that many jews no there aren't that many jews 14 million jews there are way more than 14 million grains of sand
on sea and way more than 14 million stars the point is not one for one the point is like one's innumerable and the others innumerable as far as their ability to enumerate them here's the interpretation in jeremiah the host of heaven cannot be counted and the sand of the sea cannot be measured so i will multiply the descendants of david that you won't be able to count them and i think i'm probably going to pass on the rest of these seeing how much time we have left and conclude with my single sheet of step seven
i'm just pointing you in a direction with the nature of inerrancy to say let language function the way it normally functions so that you don't find errors where there aren't any that was the point of that unit and this is our conclusion and i'm just going to tick these off in the last few minutes if all this is true and the bible is god's word how then shall we handle the bible one handle the bible with reverence as holy it is a unique precious written word of god don't make light of the bible number two
cherish that's an affection word the word of god is supremely valuable only under god himself i tried to find my source last night and i couldn't find it so i'll just paraphrase a quote that jay i packer used in one of his messages where he said that a puritan preacher in a time of great persecution stood up and he said take our houses take our clothes take our children and take our wives but don't take our bible third study the word of god seeking to understand its original meaning with your mind four pray over the
word of god that god would illumine your mind to see what is really there even though god has done that for you decisively so that you've been able to see it as true if you're a christian there's so much more to be seen and every day satan is trying to cloud you shoot fiery darts at you we need to pray earnestly that he would be defeated five meditate on the word of god reflecting both on the meaning and the implications for your life six memorize the word of god so that it feeds you transforms you
and is available for use in blessing to others memorizing has two effects one it has a transforming effect on your world view and on your way of thinking to have memorized scripture in your mind in your heart and it's there ready to bless other people in times of ministry seven spread the word of god by supporting missions and translation work and by giving away copies and portions to others oh that you would carry around little pieces of the bible the gospels of john that you would be giving bibles away that you would be leaving them
in hotels rooms that just let us be a disseminating people the bible has power in and of itself so let's get it out and especially to nations and languages that don't have it at all and finally number eight obey obey the word of god as the highest authority in your life and that's the end of the matter isn't it all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit teaching
them to observe all that i have commanded you and lo i'll be with you to the end of the age you you give yourself to knowing and studying and teaching and disseminating and doing the word of god and you have the promise i'll be with you to the end of the age let's pray father in heaven how i thank you for the written word of god where would we be if we had to intuit ultimate reality intuit ways of salvation but you have not left us without a testimony and so i praise you and i
thank you for the bible and for the heart of the bible the gospel and for the heart of the gospel the cross of jesus christ and him crucified and risen for our salvation make us instruments of spreading this truth i pray in jesus name amen you
