Bible Authority

People of real power do no more than speak to cause things to happen. No-one can have more power than God, and no-one can create by word like Him.

The Psalmist says

                        “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,

                        and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” (33:6)

and

                        “For he spoke, and it came to be;

                        he commanded, and it stood firm.” (33:9)

It is therefore very important that we pay due regard to the Scriptures for they are God’s words to us.  Let us note four things about them: they are God breathed; authoritative; contemporary; and practical.

“God breathed” is a better word than “inspired” for it speaks of what God has done, rather than the finished product.  People call Shakespeare inspired – and great as the poet was – he was not inspired in the sense that Scripture was inspired – for his writings are not God breathed. But “All Scripture is breathed out by God”. The Psalmist talks of the creative word of God as being “the breath of his mouth”.

The scriptures are to us the very authority of God himself. If you hear his word, you hear him, as you respond to his word you respond to him. The Bible writers easily jump from quoting the scriptures to quoting God – for it is the same (e.g. Hebrews 3:7, 4:3; 4:7). That God speaks to us through the activity of human writers does not diminish the fact that the words are God’s words.

Because God’s word is living and dynamic it is always contemporary. Jesus could quote the book of Exodus to the Sadducees as what God was saying to them “… as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God…?” (Matthew 22:31). It was said to Moses in the first place over a thousand years before Christ. It was then written in the book of Exodus. But to Jesus the fault of the Sadducees was their failure to see that God was saying it to them.

As Paul pointed out about the Biblical accounts of the Exodus: “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). The Old Testament was written for us – we who live in the last age, in the Year of the Lord. God’s purpose in writing is eminently practical. He wrote so that we may know Him and His plan of Salvation.

The Scriptures are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” So let us “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” the sacred scriptures that have been given to us – at home alone, with our family, and especially here in church.