February 26, 1984 (Morning)The Holy Spirit is the divine author of scripture. Therefore, if you want to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, read your Bible. If you want to be filled with the Spirit, be filled with the Bible. If you want the power of the Holy Spirit, be mighty in the Scriptures. If you want to share the holiness of the Spirit, guard your way according to his word. If you long to be led by the Spirit follow his Word in scripture. If you want the mind of the Spirit, saturate your mind with the Bible. If you want to love other people, give them the word of God -- give them a dramatization of it in your life; give them a verbalization of it in your witness; and give them a donation of it with a gift copy or a written-out portion in a letter.
Bethlehem Baptist Church
John Piper, Pastor
THE HOLY SPIRIT: AUTHOR OF SCRIPTURE
(2 Peter 1:20-21)
First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.On June 27, 1819, Adoniram Judson baptized his first convert in Burma. His wife, Ann Hasseltine, described how Moung Nau had responded to the Scripture: "A few days ago I was reading with him Christ's Sermon on the Mount. He was deeply impressed and unusually solemn. 'These words,' said he, 'take hold on my liver; they make me tremble."' God spoke through Isaiah the prophet 2700 years ago and said, "This is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word … Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word" (Isaiah 66:2,5).
For two thousand years the Bible has been taking hold of people's livers and making them tremble -- first with fear because it reveals our sin, then with faith because it reveals God's grace. A single verse, Romans 13:13, convicted and converted the immoral Augustine. For Martin Luther, a miserable monk, the light broke in through Romans 1:17. He said,
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that "the just shall live by his faith." Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise (Here I Stand, p. 49).For Jonathan Edwards it was 1 Timothy 1:17. He says,
The first instance, that I remember, of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading these words, 1 Tim. 1:17, "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen." As I read the words, there came into my soul … a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. (Works, I p. xii).From century to century, from Egypt to Germany to New England the Bible has been drawing people to Christ and making them new.
Why? Why has the Bible had this abiding relevance and power? I believe the answer is found in our text. 2 Peter 1:20-21, "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." This passage teaches that when you read Scripture, what you are reading does not merely come from a man but also from God. The Bible is the writing of many different men. But it is also far more than that. Yes, men spoke. They spoke with their own language and style. But Peter mentions two other dimensions of their speaking. First, they spoke from God. What they have to say is not merely from their own limited perspective. They are not the origin of the truth they speak; they are the channel. The truth is God's truth. Their meaning is God's meaning. Second, not only is what they spoke from God, but how they spoke it is controlled by the Holy Spirit. "Men, moved by the Holy Spirit, spoke from God." God did not simply reveal truth to the writers of Scripture and then depart in hopes that they might communicate it accurately. Peter says that in the very communicating of it they were carried by the Holy Spirit. The making of the Bible was not left to merely human skills of communication; the Holy Spirit himself carried the process to completion.
One recent book by three former teachers of mine (LaSor, Hubbard and Bush, Old Testament Survey, p. 15) put it like this,
To assure verbal precision God, in communicating his revelation, must be verbally precise, and inspiration must extend to the very words. This does not mean that God dictated every word. Rather his Spirit so pervaded the mind of the human writer that he chose out of his own vocabulary and experience precisely those words, thoughts and expressions that conveyed God's message with precision. In this sense the words of the human authors of Scripture can be viewed as the word of God.Someone might say that 2 Peter 1:20-21 only has to do with prophecy not with all Old Testament scripture. But look carefully how he argues. In verse 19 Peter says that a prophetic word has been made more sure to him by his experience with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. Then in verses 20-21 he undergirds the authority of this prophetic word by saying it is part of scripture. Verse 20: "No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation." Peter is not saying that only prophetic parts of scripture are inspired by God. He is saying, We know the prophetic word is inspired precisely because it is a "prophecy of Scripture." Peter's assumption is that whatever stands in scripture is from God, written by men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
His teaching is the same as Paul's in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness." None of the Old Testament scriptures came by the impulse of man. All of it is truth from God as men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
But what about the New Testament? Did the apostles and their close associates (Mark, Luke, James, Jude and the writer to the Hebrews) experience divine inspiration as they wrote? Were they "carried" by the Holy Spirit to speak from God? The Christian church has always answered yes. Jesus said to his apostles in John 16:12-13, "I have yet many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak and he will declare to you things that are to come." Then the apostle Paul confirms this when he says of his own apostolic teaching in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13, "We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit." In 2 Cor. 13:3 he said that Christ speaks in him. And in Galatians 1:12 he said, "I did not receive [my gospel] from man nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ." If we take Paul as our model for what it meant to be an apostle of Christ, then it would be fair to say that the New Testament as well as the Old is not merely from man but also from God. The writers of the Old Testament and New Testament spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
The doctrine that emerges is this: The Holy Spirit is the divine author of all Scripture. If this doctrine is true then the implications are so profound and far-reaching that every part of our lives should be affected. I want to talk about those implications this morning. But for our own strengthening and for those still wavering on the outskirts of commitment let me first sketch out the basis of our persuasion.
Most people come to a reasonable trust in the Bible as God's word something like this. It happens in three stages. First, the testimony of our own conscience, the reality of God behind nature, and the message of scripture come together in our hearts to give us the inescapable conviction that we are guilty before our Creator. This is a reasonable conviction because the persuasion that there is a Creator above this world and the persuasion that we are guilty for not honoring and thanking him as we ought are not irrational leaps in the dark; they are forced upon us by our experience and our honest thinking about the world.
The second step on the way to a reasonable persuasion that the Bible is God's word is that Jesus Christ is shown to us. Someone reads or tells us the story of this incomparable man who talked and acted like so much more than a man. We see the authority he claimed to forgive sin and command demons and control nature, we see the purity of his moral teaching, his utter surrender to the will of God, his brilliant calm under cross-examination, his righteous fury against hypocrites, his tenderness toward little children, his patience with the humble seekers, his innocent submission to torture, and we hear from his lips the sweetest, most-needed words ever spoken: "I have come to give my life as a ransom for many." And so by the self-authenticating force of his incomparable character and power Jesus wins our confidence and our trust and we take him as Savior from our sin and Lord of our life. And this is not an irrational persuasion. It's the way all of you go about making reasonable decisions about whom you will trust in life. Will you trust this baby sitter with your children, or this lawyer to give you good counsel, or this friend to keep your secret? You look, you listen, and eventually you are persuaded (or not) that here in this person is solid ground for your confidence.
Once the character and power of Jesus have captured our trust, then he becomes the guide and authority for all our future decisions and persuasions. So the third step on the way to a reasonable persuasion that the Bible is God's word is to let the teaching and the spirit of Jesus control how we assess the Bible. This happens in at least two ways. One is that we accept what Jesus teaches about the Old and New Testaments. When he says that scripture can't be broken (John 10:35) and that not an iota or dot will pass from the law till all is accomplished (Mt. 5:18) we agree with him and base our confidence in the Old Testament on his reliability. And when he chose twelve apostles to found his church, gives them his authority to teach and promises to send his Spirit to guide them into truth, we agree with him and credit the writings of these men with the authority of Christ.
The other way the teaching and spirit of Jesus control our assessment of the Bible is that we recognize in the teachings of the Bible the many-colored rays of light refracted out from the prism of Christ whom we have come to trust. And just as Christ enabled us to make sense out of our relation to God and bring harmony to it, so also the many rays of his truth in every part of the Bible enable us to make sense out of hundreds of our experiences in life and see the way to harmony. Our confidence in Scripture grows as we realize that Jesus affirmed it and as we realize that its teachings are as incomparable as Jesus himself. Time after time they help us make sense out of life's puzzles: failing marriages, rebellious children, drug addiction, warring nations, the return of leaves in spring, the insatiable longings of our hearts, the fear of death, the coming into being of children, the universality of praise and blame, the prevalence of pride and the admiration of self-denial. The Bible confirms its divine origin again and again as it makes sense out of our experience in the real world and points the way to harmony.
I hope therefore that one of the doctrines which we cherish at Bethlehem enough to die for it (and live for it!) is that the Holy Spirit is the divine author of all scripture. The Bible is God's word, not merely man's word.
O, that we had all day to talk about the wonderful implications of this doctrine! The Holy Spirit is the author of scripture. Therefore, it is true (Ps. 119:142) and altogether reliable (Heb. 6:18). It is powerful, working its purpose in our hearts (1 Thess. 2:13) and not returning empty to the One who sent it (Is. 55:10-11). It is pure like silver refined in a furnace seven times (Ps. 12:6). It is sanctifying (John 17:17). It gives life (Ps. 119:37, 50, 93, 107; John 6:63; Mt. 4:4). It makes wise (Ps. 19:7; 119:99-100). It gives joy (Ps. 19:8; 119:16, 92, 111, 143, 174) and promises great reward (Ps. 19:11). It gives strength to the weak (Ps. 119:28) and comfort to the distraught (Ps. 119:76), and guidance to the perplexed (Ps. 119:105), and salvation to the lost (Ps. 119:155; 2 Tim. 3:15). The wisdom of God in scripture is inexhaustible.
How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them they are more than the sand.
(Ps. 139:17-18).
Since God has gripped us at Bethlehem with
his global cause of frontier missions let me stress this last
implication. If the Spirit of God is the divine author of
the Bible, then the most loving thing you can do for any group
of people is to give them the Bible. If this is where God speaks
and if the word of God gives life, then life-giving missions is
essentially Bible translation (helping the Word of God be understood
in another culture). William Carey's partner in India in 1796,
John Thomas, wrote,
I would give a million pounds sterling, if I had it, to see a Bengal Bible. O most merciful God, what an inestimable blessing it will be to these millions! Methinks all heaven and hell will be moved at a Bible's entering such a country as this. O Lord, send forth thy light and thy truth (Periodical Accounts, 1:292-293).This passion for God's word enabled William Carey during his forty-one years in India to put at least part of the Bible into thirty-six different languages.
Adoniram Judson, another Baptist missionary,
who poured out his life for the people of Burma and finished his
translation of the Bible in 1834, wrote a warning and a challenge
in his Memoirs (2:236-7) which rings true 150 years later:
This one perfect book is the sacred deposit in the hands of the church. It has been deposited with injunction, "Freely ye have received. Freely give." Woe be to that man who withholds the treasure from his neighbor. Woe be to him who attempts to obscure the light of the lamp of heaven … Praised be God for Bible and Missionary Societies, the peculiar institutions of modern times. May their efforts be continued and enlarged a hundred-fold, until their work is consummated until the Bible is translated and published in every language under heaven and a copy of the sacred volume deposited in every palace and house and hut inhabited by man.Where are we today? The World Christian Encyclopedia (1982, p. 13) describes the situation like this:
The world of the 20th century has some 7010 distinct and different languages in it … Of these by the year 1900 the Christian Scriptures had become available, in whole or in part, in 537 languages. Through prodigious efforts, this total rose by 1980 to 1,811 languages with Scriptures. This leaves 5,200 languages with no translations as yet -- a staggering challenge to global Christianity. Native speakers of these languages in 1980 numbered some 185 million -- 4.2% of the world with no access to the Scriptures in their mother tongue. Translation projects are therefore in progress in 986 languages … Despite this monumental translation work by the churches worldwide, it is calculated that at least 3,297 further languages have a definite need for immediate Bible translation … but up to the present no one has begun the necessary work in them.So Judson's words are even more forceful today: Freely you have received, freely give.
I close with a personal testimony and call
for action. On my fifteenth birthday my parents gave me this
Bible with my name printed on the front. My mother wrote in the
front leaf, "Happy Birthday, Son, January 11, 1961. This
Book will keep you from sin. Or sin will keep you from this Book.
Mother and Daddy." On the next leaf I wrote what I would
have called then a life verse, Galatians 2:20. Five years later
at the beginning of my sophomore year at Wheaton I spent three
weeks in the campus hospital with mono. I can remember as though
it were yesterday Chaplin Evan Welsh with his gray-haired flat-top
coming to visit me. Just as he was leaving he turned at the door
and said, "Do you have a favorite verse?" And without
any hesitation I said, "Galatians 2:20, 'I am crucified with
Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me
and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son
of God who loved me and gave himself for me."'
And I remember turning on the bedside radio
to the campus station WETN to listen to the spiritual emphasis
week speaker. It was John Harold Okenga, the pastor of Park Street
Church in Boston. For five days I listened to him each morning.
And I was so moved by his exposition of Scripture that I said,
"Lord, I would love to understand and teach and preach the
Bible like that. And I believe that week in 1966 was the decisive
moment in my life where God gripped me with the glory of the ministry
of his Word. I said to Noël at the end of that week, "I
think I'm going to seminary." I dropped organic chemistry
and all my pre-med plans and from that day to this have loved
nothing more than to study, to teach and to preach the Bible.
And today the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture has such
glorious implications for life and ministry that I cannot imagine
anything more thrilling, more fulfilling or more rewarding for
me than to study and preach the Word of God.
My call to you young people is that you bow
before the mighty God of the Bible and ask: Is there not a famine
of the Word of God world-wide and even in many churches and seminaries?
Is not the inspired Scripture the only hope of the lost and power
for the church? Is there anything I could do with my life more
satisfying, more God-exalting than to understand and share his
word.
And to those of you who are not called to a
vocational ministry of the word, I call you to be the incarnation
of God's word where you live and work -- to be so saturated with
the Bible that the way you feel and think and do everything is
changed. Believe it, study it, memorize it, obey it, sing it.
For as it is written
- Blessed is the man
- who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the way of scoffers;
- but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
- He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
that yields its fruit in its season,
- and its leaf does not wither.
- In all that he does he prospers.
- The wicked are not so,
- but are like the chaff which the wind drives away.
- Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
- nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
- for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
- but the way of the wicked will perish.