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“We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.”

INTRODUCTION: Today we begin a new sermon series entitled, “Biblical Foundations.” The Bible is a big book, and it contains a lot of teachings, but there are at least seven areas of teaching that are so important, so essential to the Christian faith, that we can truly call them foundational teachings.

These core, essential truths of the Bible are so important that we adopted them as our church statement of faith. Our church statement of faith comes from the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 local churches from about 40 different denominations.

We are calling this series Biblical Foundations because these seven core teachings are foundational to everything else we do and believe as a church. These seven areas of teaching are as follows: 1) the Bible, 2) God, 3) Jesus, 4) salvation, 5) the Holy Spirit, 6) the resurrection, and 7) the church.

Together they form the core, historical, biblical truths upon which Christianity and the church are founded. They are the basic, bedrock truths of the Bible, clearly taught in Scripture, clearly understood by all who care to understand. They are what we might call the non-negotiables of the Christian faith. And as such we will take the time to study them in-depth over the next seven weeks. We begin today with the Bible. (Read 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and pray.)

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So, we are studying our church statement of faith over these next seven weeks, and we begin today with the Bible. Let me read to you the first section from our statement of faith which deals with the Bible: “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.”

It’s a fairly simple, direct statement, but there are a lot of important truths to unpack from this one sentence. So, we are going to examine this statement today, test it against Scripture, and see why this belief in the Bible is one of the foundational beliefs of Christianity.

I. The Bible: the sole basis of our belief
   – 2 Peter 1:20-21

So, let’s get started. The first part of this statement simply says: “We believe the Bible.” In other words, the Bible is the sole basis of our belief.

You may wonder why we begin with the Bible instead of with God. And it’s a good question. God is certainly prior to the Bible. He comes first. As Christians, we don’t worship the Bible; we worship God. So, why do we begin with the Bible instead of with God?

It’s not because the Bible is more important than God; without God there would be no Bible. But without the Bible we would not have a true understanding of God. We would just have your opinion, my opinion, and everyone else’s. God has chosen to reveal himself to us through the Bible. And so, it is through the Bible that we gain true knowledge of God.

We begin with the Bible because the Bible is the sole basis of our belief – not only about God, but about all the other foundational truths too – about Jesus, salvation, the Holy Spirit, the resurrection, and the church. And yes, the Bible is the sole basis of our belief even concerning the Bible itself.

Now, this sometimes confuses people. They call it circular logic. “Why do you believe the Bible? Because it is God’s Word. How do you know the Bible is God’s Word? Because it says so. How do you know that what the Bible says is true? Because it is God’s Word. Well, how do you know the Bible is God’s Word? Because it says so.” You can see how that conversation could get frustrating very quickly.

So, do we have any evidence that the Bible is God’s Word beyond the fact that it just says so? And the answer is yes, in fact we do! God did not just give us his word without any way to substantiate its claims.

One evidence is the marvelous harmony of Scripture. The Bible was written by approximately thirty-six different writers over a period of nearly sixteen centuries. You try getting thirty-six people in a room and getting them to agree on anything! And yet, the Bible presents one unified message from beginning to end, a message that gradually unfolds in the Old Testament and finds completion in the New. There are no contradictions in Scripture. The whole Bible testifies to the work of a single author. This is amazing evidence that the Bible is truly the word of God.

Another evidence is fulfilled prophecy. We read in 2 Peter 1: “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20-21). The Bible contains thousands of detailed prophecies which were fulfilled precisely in later years. Some of these prophecies pertained to individuals, some were directed towards entire nations, over three hundred related directly to Christ. Many of these prophecies were given centuries in advance of their fulfillment. You can read the prophecy as it was given in Scripture, and then you can see the fulfillment as it took place in history. This is extremely powerful evidence that the Bible is truly God’s Word. No other sacred writing from any religion authenticates itself the way the Bible does through fulfilled prophecy.

And so, the Bible is the sole basis of our belief. We do not base our belief on our own thoughts or ideas. We base our belief solely on what God has told us through the Bible. Now that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t read anything else. You can find encouragement and inspiration from other writings. I enjoy reading good, Christian books all the time. But only the Bible is the word of God. Other books may contain truth, but you must test that truth according to the Bible. Always go back to God’s word. When you hear a teaching, always ask yourself, “What does the Bible say? Does it line up with Scripture?” The Bible is God’s Word and therefore is the sole basis of our belief.

II. Canon: the 66 books of the Old and New Testament
   – John 14:16-17, 14:26, 15:26-27, 16:12-13

This naturally leads to a second question. If the Bible is the sole basis of our belief, then what books are in the Bible? How do we know which books belong? This is the question of “canon” which we need to address next.
The word canon (that’s canon with one “n” in the middle) does not mean a weapon that you use to fire cannonballs. That would be “cannon” spelt with two “n’s” in the middle. The word canon with one “n” in the middle comes from the Greek word kanon (that’s kanon spelled with a k: k-a-n-o-n) which means “a measuring rod, or ruler.” So, just as you use a ruler to measure other objects, the word canon as applied to Scripture means the measure of those books which the early church recognized as truly belonging to Scripture.

Both Christians and Jews have their own canons. Jews recognize the 39 books of the Old Testament as Scripture. Protestant Christians recognize 66 books as Scripture: the 39 books of the Old Testament plus the 27 books of the New Testament. The Catholic church recognizes 73 books as Scripture: the 39 books of the Old Testament, the 27 books of the New Testament, plus an additional seven books taken from a collection known as the Apocrypha. And then, there are groups who think that still other books should belong to the canon. So, who’s right? How do you know which books truly belong in the Bible?

Let’s start with the Old Testament canon. For me this one is easy. All three major groups who use the Bible – Protestants, Catholics and Jews – all agree that the 39 books of the Old Testament belong to the canon of Scripture. These are the books which God gave to the nation of Israel through the prophets over a period of more than a thousand years. These 39 books were completed four hundred years before the birth of Christ, and Jesus himself affirmed the Jewish Scriptures as the very word of God.

How about the New Testament canon? The books of the New Testament were all written in the first century in the years following the death and resurrection of Christ. Before Jesus left his disciples, he told them some things about the New Testament that was to come.

In John 14 he said: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth…. The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (John 14:16-17, 26).

Jesus went on to say in John 15: “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning” (John 15:26-27).

And then finally in John 16, Jesus said: “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:12-13).

When you put it all together, this is what Jesus was saying. “I have more to tell you, but this is not the right time. However, when the Holy Spirit comes, he will make it known to you. He will speak words of truth from God to you. Then, you must testify to what the Holy Spirit says.”

And that’s exactly what happened. The Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the New Testament books even as he inspired the writers of the Old Testament books. In fact, just as the Old Testament bears witness to itself as Scripture, the New Testament also bears witness to itself as Scripture. Peter calls Paul’s writings Scripture (2 Pet. 3:16). Paul quotes the gospel of Luke as Scripture (Luke 10:7; 1 Tim 5:18). The early church recognized these 27 books as inspired by God and by the year A.D. 397 the church officially canonized these 27 books as Scripture along with the 39 books of the Old Testament.

So, what about the apocryphal books? There are 14 books in the Apocrypha which were all written during the time between the end of the Old Testament and the time of Christ. As we mentioned earlier, the Catholic church includes seven of these books in their Bible (as well as some additional material in the books of Esther and Daniel).

There is nothing particularly wrong with the apocryphal books themselves. Some of them provide valuable historical information about the four centuries before Christ, but they should never be considered part of the Bible, for at least four good reasons.

First of all, the Jews never accepted them as part of the Old Testament Scriptures. Secondly, although the writers of the New Testament knew about these books, they never quote from any of them as Scripture. The New Testament writers are always quoting the Old Testament as Scripture. They sometimes quote other works as history or as illustrations (Acts 17:28; Jude 14-15), but they never quote any books outside of the Old Testament as Scripture. Thirdly, the apocryphal books sometimes contain questionable accounts and questionable theology when compared with the true books of Scripture. And fourthly, and for me this is the clincher, Jesus never viewed the apocryphal books as Scripture. Jesus accepted the Jewish Scriptures as they were in his day – those writings which comprise the 39 books of our Old Testament today (see Luke 24:44). So, to sum up – Jesus, the early church and the Jews never accepted the apocryphal books as Scripture. In fact, even the Catholic church didn’t officially accept them into the canon until the year 1546 at the Council of Trent.

So then, what are the books of the Bible? The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testament. When we say, “We believe the Bible,” we mean the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testament and nothing else. The Bible is the sole basis of our belief.

III. Infallibility: God’s inspired words of inerrant truth
   – 2 Timothy 3:16

Next, we need to look at infallibility, and the two key words here are inspired and infallible. Going back to our statement of faith: “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” The word infallible means “perfect, completely dependable, flawless.” Infallibility and inspiration go together. The Scriptures are infallible because they are God’s inspired words to man.

The apostle Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16) or “inspired.” The word translated “God-breathed” in this verse is a unique word which speaks to the uniqueness of Scripture. It tells us that the words of Scripture come from the very breath or mouth of God.

We are trained in reading scholarship or journalism to look at the writer’s sources. The trustworthiness of any writer’s material is only as good as his sources. Well, when it comes to Scripture you have the ultimate source because God is the source for Scripture – God who is all-wise, all-powerful, all-knowing, infallible, the God of absolute veracity and truth. You can’t get any better than that!

Someone may object, “Okay, so you have a perfect source, but what about the writers of Scripture? They weren’t perfect. How can we trust that they wrote down what God wanted them to write?” That’s where the process of inspiration comes in.

Yes, God used imperfect men to write down the words of Scripture, but the words they wrote were inspired or God-breathed. In other words, the Holy Spirit safeguarded the original writings from error and so secured a trustworthy and true revelation from God concerning himself and his works in history. God inspired the writers to write his words so that the words they wrote could truly be called the word of God.

And so, Scripture is infallible because: 1) God the source is infallible, and 2) God worked through the process of inspiration to ensure that the final product was infallible. The words of Scripture are inspired by God, and therefore they are perfect, completely dependable, flawless.

We use the word “inerrant” to speak of the fact that in every word God guided the writers into truth and protected them from error in what they wrote. Now obviously this only applies to the original writings. We cannot apply this same principle to every translation of Scripture. Some translations are better than others. However, to whatever extent a certain translation reflects the original inspired text, we can say that that translation truly speaks forth the word of God.

Praise God we have some of the best translations of Scripture ever produced available today, so you can have full confidence as you read the Bible that you are reading God’s infallible word to you. Some of the better translations available today are the New International Version, the English Standard Version and the New American Standard Version among others. If you are not sure about the translation you are using, I would be glad to look at it with you to make sure that you have a good translation of God’s word.

IV. Authority: a reliable guide for faith and practice
   – Psalm 19:7-8; Proverbs 30:5

And then finally we want to look at the authority of Scripture: “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.”

As we just saw, the Scriptures are infallible because they are inspired by God. And because they are infallible, they are also authoritative. The Bible is the authoritative word of God and is therefore a reliable guide for faith and practice. When the teaching of God’s word comes into conflict with some other teaching, or someone else’s opinion, or even the way you may personally feel about an issue, God’s word has full and final authority.

Proverbs 30:5 says: “Every word of God is flawless” (Prov. 30:5). Psalm 19 says: “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes” (Ps 19:7-8). God’s word is perfect, trustworthy, radiant and right. And what does it do for you when you fully trust its authority in your life? It revives your soul; it makes you wise; it gives joy to your heart and light to your eyes.

The Scriptures are God’s unique, full, and final authority on all matters of faith and practice. There are two ways in particular that you may rely on the Scriptures. First, you may rely on Scripture’s authority as far as what you believe. The Scriptures give you authoritative truth concerning such matters as God, Christ, sin, death, heaven and hell. If you want to know the truth about these matters, read the Bible. If you want to test the truth of someone’s teaching about such matters, read the Bible. The Scriptures give you completely reliable and true information concerning all of these matters and more.

Secondly, God’s word not only tells you what to believe but also instructs you in how to live. God’s word is the final authority for both faith and practice. God in his word tells you what actions are right and what actions are wrong. He gives you principles to live by which will protect you from harm and grant you a life of security and peace in him. When you are not sure what choices or decisions to make in life, look to the teachings of Scripture to guide you. They are a fully reliable guide for all that you believe and all that you do. “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.”

CONCLUSION: And so, the first biblical foundation we have looked at this morning is none other than the Bible itself. The Bible is our sole basis of belief. The canon of the Bible contains the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments and nothing else. The Scriptures are infallible. They are God’s inspired words of inerrant truth. And therefore, the Bible is our authority in life. It is a completely trustworthy and reliable guide for faith and practice.

I’m sure you can already guess what the application is for today’s message. Read your Bible! Read it, study it, memorize it, learn it. Read God’s word daily. The Bible is the basic foundation for everything you do and believe as a Christian. It will give you true and reliable guidance for everyday life. And of course, it will point you to Jesus, because the whole Bible points to Christ.

As you read the words of Scripture you will draw close to God himself because these are his words. It has been said that the Bible is the only book whose author is always present when you read it. It’s true! As you read the Bible God will speak his words lovingly to your heart if you will let him. As you spend time daily with God in his word, the Scriptures will indeed revive your soul, make you wise, give joy to your heart and light to your eyes. Read God’s word daily, and you will build a solid foundation for your life.

© Ray Fowler

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Click here for more messages from the Biblical Foundations series.
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