Can We Trust the Bible?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - A podcast listener named Bryce writes in to ask this,

00:00:08.240 | "Pastor John, I just listened to episode number 296

00:00:11.840 | "where you describe what biblical inerrancy actually is.

00:00:15.800 | "Now that I know how you define inerrancy,

00:00:17.900 | "my question to you is this.

00:00:19.960 | "Why do you personally believe the Bible is trustworthy?"

00:00:24.700 | - That's a fair and a very important question.

00:00:29.980 | I feel the importance of it right now

00:00:32.960 | because I just spent six weeks writing a book

00:00:36.200 | to answer the question.

00:00:38.120 | So this will be difficult to keep short,

00:00:40.700 | but I think I can do it.

00:00:42.240 | The answer, how the Bible gives a well-grounded,

00:00:47.240 | and I think that phrase matters,

00:00:49.960 | a well-grounded conviction about its truthfulness

00:00:54.960 | or its inerrancy,

00:00:56.240 | and I'm using those two words interchangeably.

00:00:58.840 | Inerrancy is just the negative way

00:01:00.420 | of saying completely truthful, and I believe both.

00:01:03.440 | I'm okay with both of those words.

00:01:05.280 | The answer to that question has many angles and aspects.

00:01:11.240 | People have come at this so many different ways.

00:01:15.480 | So let me just mention three

00:01:18.720 | that seem most important to me,

00:01:22.440 | and I'm gonna jumble them all together

00:01:24.280 | so you'll lose track of what the three are probably,

00:01:28.440 | but it has to do with the glory of God,

00:01:32.600 | the nature of the word of God,

00:01:33.980 | and the claims of the Scripture.

00:01:35.600 | Those would be the three,

00:01:36.480 | and you can look for them in this jumble.

00:01:39.440 | I take my starting point from the analogy

00:01:42.800 | that God expects us to see His glory,

00:01:46.700 | be sure of His glory, know His glory,

00:01:49.080 | be convinced of His glory, His reality,

00:01:52.200 | through its revelation in nature, Romans 1:20.

00:01:56.960 | His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power

00:01:59.840 | and divine nature, have been clearly perceived

00:02:03.320 | in the things that have been made,

00:02:05.520 | so they are without excuse, for they knew God.

00:02:08.500 | Though they knew God, knew God,

00:02:11.280 | they did not glorify Him as God or give Him thanks.

00:02:15.400 | They exchanged the glory of God for the glory of images.

00:02:20.400 | So God, people are without excuse

00:02:24.920 | if they do not see and treasure

00:02:28.440 | the glory of God revealed in nature.

00:02:31.000 | If they don't glorify Him and thank Him,

00:02:34.000 | God holds man accountable to see,

00:02:37.480 | to be convinced by, to worship the spiritual beauty of God

00:02:42.480 | through the material universe.

00:02:46.920 | Just think of it, He expects us to see it,

00:02:50.280 | and you can't put spiritual beauty, glory of God,

00:02:54.760 | in a test tube for empirical proof or testing.

00:02:57.960 | You see it or you don't see it,

00:03:01.080 | and God holds us responsible to see it.

00:03:05.160 | Now, that's all an analogy for me.

00:03:07.720 | I think the same thing is true of God's Word.

00:03:11.980 | In fact, the more I think about it,

00:03:13.480 | the more obvious that would be.

00:03:15.380 | If God puts a world out there and says,

00:03:18.960 | know me through it, how much more if He put,

00:03:23.120 | if He put a word out there,

00:03:25.760 | would He assume, see me in it, know me through it?

00:03:30.560 | And I think Paul points us in that direction,

00:03:34.920 | namely that God holds us accountable

00:03:37.720 | for seeing the glory of God in His Word

00:03:42.360 | the way He holds us accountable

00:03:44.080 | for seeing the glory of God in His world.

00:03:47.400 | We can know the Bible is God's Word

00:03:52.080 | the same way we know the world is God's world.

00:03:56.360 | Same dynamics, same principle.

00:03:59.040 | And the text that points me in that direction

00:04:02.960 | is 2 Corinthians 4, verses four and six.

00:04:07.800 | The God of this world, that's Satan,

00:04:09.800 | has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them

00:04:12.880 | from, here's the phrase,

00:04:14.760 | from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,

00:04:19.760 | who is the image of God.

00:04:21.640 | So there's a light of the gospel.

00:04:24.160 | When the gospel is spoken,

00:04:26.000 | there's a glory of Christ shining in it that we're to see.

00:04:30.680 | And then verse six, the God who said

00:04:34.000 | in His making of the world,

00:04:36.080 | let light shine out of darkness,

00:04:38.100 | has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge

00:04:43.100 | of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

00:04:47.320 | So God moves into our heart.

00:04:50.080 | He removes the blinders and He enables us in the Word,

00:04:55.020 | the narrative, the story of the gospel

00:04:58.980 | to see the glory of God so that we know

00:05:02.560 | this is God's gospel like we know this is God's world.

00:05:07.240 | So Paul says, when the story of the gospel,

00:05:10.040 | the Word, is truly, fully spoken,

00:05:13.840 | it is the gospel of the glory of Christ,

00:05:16.640 | who is the image of God.

00:05:18.040 | And from this, I think Paul affirms

00:05:21.880 | that the glory of God is seen in the Word of God.

00:05:26.800 | For Paul, the gospel is an articulable Word.

00:05:31.120 | And that glory is like light to the eye of the human heart.

00:05:36.120 | We see the glory of God and it is self-evident

00:05:41.960 | this is the glory of God.

00:05:44.700 | And thus, this is the glory of God's Word

00:05:48.200 | in which it is shining.

00:05:50.620 | This is God's Word like that is God's world.

00:05:54.600 | And from that experience of mine

00:05:58.360 | with the Word over the years,

00:06:01.640 | and that conviction that God expects us

00:06:05.160 | to see Him and His self-authenticating glory in His Word,

00:06:12.000 | from that experience and that conviction,

00:06:16.380 | I move to my second point, namely, God's Word is true.

00:06:21.380 | The sum of your Word is truth, Psalm 119.60.

00:06:28.240 | Every word it proves true.

00:06:32.220 | So if this is God's Word, it is true, it is inerrant.

00:06:37.220 | And part of this is the witness,

00:06:40.860 | this is my third thing now,

00:06:42.580 | part of this truth is the witness of God's Word to itself

00:06:47.540 | that it cannot be broken, John 10.35.

00:06:51.140 | Thus, scriptures cannot be broken.

00:06:53.780 | So as you move from this first, broad, stunning,

00:06:58.060 | self-authenticating experience with the Word of God

00:07:01.300 | whereby God says, "This is my Word and this is my glory,"

00:07:04.660 | and you move from there to God speaks the truth

00:07:06.580 | and you move from there to God says things about His Word,

00:07:09.060 | your sense and your conviction

00:07:11.660 | of the inerrancy of Scripture grows.

00:07:13.580 | And I would just commend Kevin DeYoung's new book,

00:07:16.100 | "Taking God at His Word,"

00:07:17.980 | where he spells out many of these texts

00:07:20.860 | about what the Bible teaches about itself.

00:07:24.040 | Now, maybe one last thing.

00:07:25.980 | If you would push on me personally, about my experience

00:07:30.500 | of how I am compelled to believe the Bible is God's Word

00:07:36.340 | and thus inerrant, I would zero in on Jesus and Paul.

00:07:41.340 | I mean, this is biography now.

00:07:46.060 | It's not trying to say the Bible says this.

00:07:49.020 | It's just how John Piper experiences God through the Bible

00:07:52.840 | and comes to his conviction

00:07:54.260 | about the inerrancy of the Bible.

00:07:56.060 | I zero in on Jesus and Paul.

00:07:59.500 | The more I have looked, I'm 69,

00:08:02.700 | been reading the Bible since I was five, probably.

00:08:05.540 | I have looked at the,

00:08:07.180 | the more I've looked at the teachings

00:08:08.860 | and the deeds of Jesus over the years,

00:08:12.300 | as they're given to us in the four Gospels,

00:08:15.480 | I am compelled, like this is no big choice on my part.

00:08:20.220 | I am compelled to say, I have seen His glory.

00:08:25.220 | His glory as of the Son from the Father,

00:08:30.540 | John 1:14 has become my experience.

00:08:33.460 | We beheld His glory, glory as the only Son from the Father.

00:08:37.660 | So He and all His words and all His work are words of truth

00:08:42.660 | because He is the truth.

00:08:45.820 | He has confirmed Himself, stood forth,

00:08:49.360 | revealed His glory to me.

00:08:51.220 | I cannot walk away from Jesus.

00:08:54.180 | I cannot see Him any other way

00:08:56.700 | than as the glorious one that He is.

00:09:00.660 | And the second thing,

00:09:01.820 | the more I read the letters of Paul,

00:09:04.380 | the more I am compelled to say, He's no fool.

00:09:09.220 | He's no lunatic.

00:09:10.420 | He's no charlatan.

00:09:11.940 | He is more real than any fallen man,

00:09:16.380 | any other fallen man.

00:09:18.500 | He's not Jesus.

00:09:19.580 | He's just more real than any other fallen man

00:09:23.140 | I have ever known.

00:09:25.260 | He is authentic, and so is His message.

00:09:29.380 | So Jesus and Paul, in their own unique ways,

00:09:33.140 | are compelling embodiments of the glory of God

00:09:37.620 | in the face of Christ.

00:09:39.500 | One as God, and the other as a faithful witness to God.

00:09:42.580 | They are true, and what they say about all the scriptures

00:09:47.000 | is enough for me to trust them,

00:09:49.620 | to mention the fact that they too shine

00:09:53.720 | with the glory of God who inspired them.

00:09:56.420 | So in a sentence, I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible

00:10:01.420 | because of the divine origin of the Bible,

00:10:05.420 | and that divine origin is as evident

00:10:08.340 | as the divine origin of the universe.

00:10:11.080 | - Outstanding, thank you, Pastor John.

00:10:13.820 | And as you picked up, this is all overflow

00:10:16.380 | from John Piper's new book that he mentioned.

00:10:18.380 | He just wrote it.

00:10:19.420 | We talked more about this new book

00:10:21.120 | back in episode number 583,

00:10:22.740 | which was titled "The New Book John Piper Wrote."

00:10:25.940 | In that episode, if you listen to it,

00:10:27.500 | you'll hear details about the book

00:10:28.980 | that you won't find anywhere else online.

00:10:31.300 | And if you want the scoop,

00:10:32.360 | check out episode number 583 in the archive.

00:10:36.120 | Well, if you have an excellent question like Bryce did,

00:10:37.980 | you can send those in to us,

00:10:39.280 | and you can download podcast apps for free,

00:10:42.260 | and you can search our archive of episodes

00:10:44.060 | all online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:10:49.060 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:10:51.060 | Pastor John and I return tomorrow.

00:10:52.540 | We'll see you then.

00:10:53.460 | (gentle music)

00:10:56.040 | (gentle music)

00:10:58.620 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Can We Trust the Bible?

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