(upbeat music) - Welcome back to a new week on the Ask Pastor John podcast. And last week, Pastor John, you shared with us 15 lessons on writing from your recent six week writing leave. And now it's finally time to talk about what you wrote. So give us a little preview of your new book.

- So I started the six week writing leave with the expectation that I would write a book on how to use the Bible to the greatest, to get the greatest treasures out of it. How do you look at the book and benefit from the book? I was a good five weeks into this project before I gave that up.

I thought that's where I was going. And 90,000 words later, that's not where I went. Here's how it happened. I was writing and I thought, well, I've got to at least say something at the beginning of the book on how we know the Bible is true, how we know it's the word of God, how we can put any confidence in it so that we're warranted in spending so much time trying to look at the book.

Well, that initial question took over. It just took over. And that's what the book is about. Now, if I were to title the book now, it would be "A Peculiar Glory," colon, subtitle, "How the Christian Scriptures Reveal That They Are True," or something like that. So, and this idea of a peculiar glory is the new and fresh thing.

So I tell my story in the book, my story with the Bible, my whole life from six years old until today on my life with the Bible. That's a chapter in the book. And the fresh thing about that chapter is I don't talk about how did I manage to hold on to a view of the Bible through college and seminary and German liberal graduate school.

And my answer is I didn't hold on to a view of the Bible. A view through the Bible held on to me. - Oh, that's good. - I had this picture of, I'm inside an Alpine chalet and there's a masterpiece on the wall, a Rembrandt masterpiece on the wall.

And that could be my view of the Bible. And can I hold on to my view that that's a masterpiece? As everybody tells me, it's not, it's an ugly painting. And I can hold on, it's a masterpiece, a masterpiece. Is that what happened through all those years? Or did I walk over to the window in the chalet and saw the Alps outside, so that the Bible became the window and held me not by some view that I was clutching, but rather it just continually revealed to me more of God so that I couldn't be let go.

So that's what is going on in that chapter. And then I tackle which books are in the Bible, the canon issue, the issue of do we have the actual words? And I love some insights that I got there about, I've heard people be so skeptical about, ah, what difference does it make if you confess in your doctrinal statement that you have an inerrant Bible in the original manuscripts?

You don't have the original manuscripts anyway, so what difference does that make? So why do you have that in your confession? Well, it is massively important that that statement be in the confession. And I've got an analogy in there about email, original email that gets Xerox, that's not the right word.

- Scanned. - Scanned, thank you very much. Well, scanners typically make mistakes. They put two R's back to back, look like an M or two T's make an H or weak scanners. And so you send out this email to people and they get all these different versions because you scanned it on different days.

And does it matter that there's an original email back there with the instructions of how to get to the meeting place? And of course, somebody who's got real savvy about how scanners work, they put them all together and he figures out which mistakes they made and you finally can get back to the original.

It really does matter whether we have original manuscripts or not. And then I write about another section on the claims of scripture, even though my approach apologetically is not to say because the Bible says it's true, it's true. You have to believe the Bible, it's God's word. God's word said it is God's word and therefore you believe that.

That's probably true, it's just ambiguous because the question is how you know God's talking here. That's the big question. And that's what I turn to next. And that's half the book, the 150 pages on Edwards guiding me in two key ways. Edwards was so burdened by how the Indians, the Housatonic Indians could know the Bible is true.

When they're preliterate, they don't have any historiographical skills, how could they know? And that drives me too. I want to know what I can say to the missionary going to Papua New Guinea to speak to a tribe and speak to them from the Bible, hold a big black book in front of them, read from God's paper, God's book, and have them be able to know that's true.

I'll stake my life on that. How can that be? That's what drove Edwards. And the second way he influenced me was he took his starting point from 2 Corinthians 4, 4 to 6, where the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

And that proved to be enormously influential in how I approached this. And so maybe the last thing I should say just to give people a flavor is, I asked this question, how do we know there is a divine revelation in nature? Which Romans 1 says there is. And the answer is glory.

You exchanged the glory of God. You didn't glorify me as God. You should have seen the glory. Second question, how do you know there's a divine person in Jesus, the Jesus of history? How do you know that? How did John and James and Peter know this is God? Answer, we beheld his glory.

Glory as of the only son from the father. Third question, how do you know the gospel is a divine reality from God? Answer, 2 Corinthians 4, there is a light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, that when God overcomes Satan's blinding, you see the glory and you know.

And all I did was, in this book, was ask the fourth question, is that way of answering the question of nature, Jesus, gospel, also apply to scripture? And of course, I'm not new in this because the Westminster Larger Catechism says, how doth it appear that the scriptures are the word of God?

Answer, I'm gonna pick out one phrase, answer. The scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God by the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God. And in one way to see my book is, I just tried to write 300 pages about that sentence.

- Wonderful, thank you, Pastor John. I'm looking forward to reading the draft very soon. And of course, it's early in the process. And if we move forward and finalize the title and the release date and a publisher, I'm sure we will have more details to come on the website, DesiringGod.org, and through our social media channels as well.

So you can stay tuned to future details on the book project through those mediums. Tomorrow, we have a question from a newly married listener named Sarah, who is wrestling with 1 Corinthians 7 and asking whether or not the apostle Paul has a low view of marriage. Pastor John will tackle a very hard text tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. (silence) (silence) (silence)