The more I take in the unsettled nature of our contemporary culture, the more grateful I become that God has given us a sure foundation. Our sovereign Creator has established His unalterable truth, and His truth stands for eternity. Of that we can be certain, and that’s quite reassuring in uncertain times.
God has spoken by His decrees. God has spoken through His prophets. God has spoken through the Scriptures. How blessed we are! All 66 books of our Bible have been given to us with God’s own authority. The Scriptures of Jesus and the early church were the “Old Testament” Scriptures. By the time of the earthly ministry of Jesus, the Old Testament canon had been settled for about 300 years, and Jesus clearly validated the Old Testament as Scripture.
The development of the New Testament Canon began with the writings of the apostles. By virtue of their apostolic office, the apostles had the authority to write the words of Scripture. Their authentic written teachings were accepted by the early church as canonical, and thus as authoritative for all matters of faith and practice. For a book to be accepted into the canon, it was necessary that its divine authorship be established. By the end of the 2nd century, the four Gospels were well-circulated and accepted. By the beginning of the 4th century, the church historian Eusebius compiled a list of books accepted by the church of his day, which included 22 of our 27 books. In 367 A.D., Athanasius released a list that corresponds exactly with the New Testament canon today. Both the Council of Hippo of 393 and the Council of Carthage (St. Augustine) in 397 affirmed the same canon, but those were in many ways ratifications of what the church had essentially practiced for about 200 years. In standing behind and upon the Word of God, you and I rest on a firm foundation.
Many people will try to convince you that your Bible is unreliable, and subject to the same limitations that are common among other sources of “authority” in our world today. After all, they claim, we don’t possess any of the original autographs of any portion of the Bible. But consider this: the Hebrew text was standardized in the 6th century A.D. by the Masoretic Jews, and all other manuscripts were eliminated. The authenticity of the existing copies is supplemented by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Targans, and the Talmud. The Hebrew manuscripts surpass all others. This is largely because of the reverence and extreme care which the scribes exercised in order to minimize the possibility of error. The scribal method included counting the number of letters, words, and lines on each page. They also determined the middle letter of the entire Bible. If one mistake was discovered, the entire manuscript was destroyed.
Similarly and wonderfully, there are approximately 5000 Greek manuscripts of all or part of the New Testament in existence today. There are about 8000 Latin manuscripts and about 1000 manuscripts written in other languages. The existing manuscripts of other authors (Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, etc.) range from 1-20, compared to 14,000 of the New Testament. The writings of early Christians and the Church Fathers contain more than 86,000 citations of the Biblical text. The quality of the New Testament is better than most other ancient manuscripts. There is some minor variance among the available manuscripts, but no significant doctrine is affected in any way. The accuracy of the thousands of New Testament manuscripts is about 99.5% compared to 95% and less among other ancient documents. And don’t miss this: the time span between the original and the first copy of ancient secular manuscripts is … Caesar’s Gallic Wars, 950 years … Homer’s Odyssey, 2200 years … the New Testament, 117 years! See my point?
I’ve given you a lot to think about today, so I think I’ll simply break right here and write more on this subject next week. But I do want to offer you just one more gorgeous illustration of the cohesiveness of Scripture itself. In reality, the Bible communicates to us with more precision than we ever imagined! Consider just some of the fulfilled prophecies surrounding our Lord Jesus (often referred to as the Messianic prophecies) …
seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15; Galatians 4:4)
descendant of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; Matthew 1:1)
forerunner John (Malachi 3:1; Mark 1:1-8)
born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18-25)
born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2; Luke 2:1-7)
speaking in parables (Psalm 78:2-4; Matthew 13:34-35)
preaching ministry (Isaiah 61:1-3; Luke 4:16-21)
healing ministry (Isaiah 35:3-5; Matthew 9:35)
triumphal entry (Zechariah 9:9; John 12:12-16)
betrayal price (Zechariah 11:12-13; Matthew 26:14-16)
silence before accusers (Isaiah 53:7; Matthew 27:12-14)
crucified with robbers (Isaiah 53:12; Mark 15:27)
mocked (Psalm 22:7-8; Luke 23:35)
lots cast for clothing (Psalm 22:18; John 19:23-24)
no bones broken (Psalm 34:20; John 19:33)
pierced hands and feet( Psalm 22:16; Luke 24:38-40)
suffered thirst on cross (Psalm 69:21; John 19:28)
pierced side (Zechariah 12:10; John 19:34)
buried with the rich (Isaiah 53:9; Matthew 27:57)
resurrection (Psalm 16:10; Isaiah 52:13; Acts 2:22-36)
ascension into heaven (Psalm 68:18; Acts 1:9)
It’s one book, and it’s one story of grace. That’s because it has one Author. We’ve just scratched the surface, friends, but that alone ought to take our breath away.
God has spoken!
Pastor Charles
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