The Inspired Word of God

God is good. And I want to acknowledge some people who are not here today, not able to be here, and that is uh is it the group is growing. Sister Betty Brady, Brother and Sister Lloyd Kessler, Sister Carol Kessler, uh Sister Beverly Moy, and uh Sister Sandy Brady, not able to be here. Um Diane Cole. Somebody said this, that a man is never truly forgotten until the last time his name is spoken. I want to let these know that we have not forgotten them. They were an integral part of this congregation, unable to be here, and some of them in nursing homes, some of them shut in in their own homes, and I just want to let them know that we appreciate all the years that you have lived for God, and I do not want to forget them.

Amen. Amen. And I pray that God's word would touch them today. And we are continuing a series on the word of God. It's an amazing book. 8 and 1/2 by about 6 in, about an inch and 1/2 thick. It's the only thing that stands between you and me and eternity. That's it, right there. You have no knowledge of God except what is in this book right here. I have no knowledge of God. I have no relationship with God aside from the knowledge that I've gained from this book right here, the word of God.

And so it is it is important, it is important that we that we elevate and and I think this is the aim and the goal of all teaching and preaching, Bible teaching that is, and that is to elevate the word of God. Um the thing I'm going to talk about today, I'm going to speak about things that that you already know. We were talking before the service, but you already know a lot of these things, so I I I may reinforce some of those things, but we need to use what we know to springboard into things that we do not know, things that we have not maybe experienced.

So in Genesis chapter 1, the Hebrew Bible be The begins like this. Better a sheet better Elohim at a shamayim at a wa erets. It It starts with in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. A lot of people can't even get past that part. And if you can't believe that, you can't go any further into the word of God. In the beginning there are those that believe that the earth and the the creation actually is some 14 to 18 billion years old. I don't know.

But I know that however old it is, God created the heaven and the earth. Says and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said God said He moved and then he spoke. He moved and then he spoke. And he he continued then to speak. Not just move, but he spoke. And he continued to speak. He said, "Let there be light and there was light."

John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the word." But what about Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning God." John says, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God." Now, this is very specific. God is not every word. Words are not God. Just like the Bible says God is love. Well, love is not God. Okay? God is spirit, but not every spirit is God. But in this specific case, John related and and integrated the word inseparably with God.

God and the word are the same. The word was with God, but the word was God. And so, let me just start here and tell you that my my topic is about the inspired word of God. And uh there is a law of thermodynamics, the second law as a matter of fact called entropy, that states that the physical universe is in a state of disorder, randomness, and decay. That everything that is, everything that materially exists, is in a state of decay. Just look at me and look at what I used to be, and you can tell that everything is in a state of decay.

Amen. I'm still the same person that I was. I'm no different. And and I mentioned this before at some point. You know, we we are required sometimes to bring our birth certificate as a a form of identification. I could bring you my birth certificate, but I can guarantee you I look nothing like a 21-in 7 and 1/2-lb baby that was born back then. I have grown, I have evolved, and I have started in that decline. Hallelujah. Isn't it great to age? It's a blessing to age.

it really is. It beats the alternative anyway as far as I know. So everything John Newton said or Isaac Newton said, the this law of entropy applies to everything that is physical. You are a victim of your existence basically. I am a victim of my existence. I am therefore I am in a state of decay. I'm getting older and I will someday go back to the dust if the Lord tarries. And so uh but we we are created and I thank God for the blessing of every stage of life.

But this is not true. This cannot be true of God. God is outside of even his creation. All of creation is within the eternal God. And so uh there were there was a device. Let me let me just start here. There was a device developed by a couple of professors. Years separated, one in 1938 and one in 1954. And they developed this device. The first professor uh created what he called the drunkometer. The drunkometer. And uh and the later one called it more the more of the common name that we're aware of and that was the breathalyzer.

Hopefully none of you have ever had to do this, but but if so, you know what I'm talking about. They pull you over. I I remember I'm not even going to go there. There there there was a certain man who uh was suspected of being inebriated and and he was not. But they made him do this, blow into the breathalyzer. Because the breathalyzer it measures the amount of alcohol present in the blood by what comes out of the mouth. What is breathed out is reflective of what has gone in.

Stay with me. So, what goes into the physical, according to what these professors developed, would measure what comes out in the spirit, our breath. Listen to me. There's a principle here. What goes in? The life of the body is in the blood. Didn't say the life of the blood the body is the blood. It says the life of the body is in the blood. The life that God breathed into Adam was an oxygenating force. It oxygenates the blood. The blood circulates through the lungs and picks up the oxygen and you exhale carbon dioxide.

Boy, what a science lesson today. Entropy and breathing. But what goes into the bloodstream is ultimately going to be reflected in what you breathe out. This was the premise of the breathalyzer. And so, if you had alcohol, if you had ingested alcohol, it was going to show up on how you breathe out. Now, since God is eternal and omnipotent and all together holy, we can measure we can measure the strength of what he breathes out, what comes out of his mouth as being un incorruptible and steadfast.

Nothing goes in God that will corrupt him. So, the breathalyzer was developed to to measure if you had taken alcohol into your body, it was corrupting your bloodstream or influencing your bloodstream and and they could measure that. But, in the case of God, when he breathes or inspires something, it is pure and holy. There is nothing corruptible about what comes out of the mouth of God. It does not It is not subject to the laws of entropy. It's not subject to the laws of decay. I'm going to get us somewhere this morning and and we we have got to get to the point where we actually believe what this word represents.

It is an incorruptible word. Why? Because God, who is eternal, who is spirit, who has never taken any corruption into himself, when he breathes out a word, when he speaks out a word, it is the same. It is holy. It's why we call this not just a Bible, it is a holy Bible. The holy Bible. Because we believe, we do at least believe that it was spoken by God himself. Amen. I'm not going to address infallibility today, whether it's true or untrue. I'm going to whether it can fail or whether it, you know, it's effective.

What I want to address is is it inspired? Did God really speak these words into existence. So, I'm addressing the origin of this word. Who said this? Because that's the big argument. Who said? The real power of the word rests in who speaks it. Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 4 says this, "Where the word of a king is, there is power." That word is shultan. It means dominion. There is dominion. There is power. And who may say into him, "What doest thou?" Now, there are a lot of books on the market, a lot of religious books out there.

There are books about Confucianism and Shintoism. And particularly the biggie that we face today is Islam. And I can tell you that when when we are speaking of the word of Muhammad versus the word of Jesus, it must come down to the character of the one who is speaking. Muhammad changed his views when he when he formulated his religion in Mecca. When he began to formulate his ideas, you And this is the distinction that Islam makes in the Quran. You can read the differences. The thing that is being propagated is that Islam is a religion about families and about love and about fellowship and and all of this.

That was Mecca Muhammad. That was the Muhammad of the early days. When he gained power and moved to Medina and he got himself an army, the whole philosophy changed. Now it's about killing the infidels, not loving them, not converting them, but killing them. Muhammad changed, and so did his word. But this word right here tells me, and you can read the life of Jesus Christ, he did not waver, because he himself was the eternal word of God. The word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us.

And the word the the letter to Hebrews tells us Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. And we can trust in his word because the one who delivered the word does not change. He has not changed his viewpoints. He has not changed his stance. He speaks, and it is forever settled. The reason this word does not change is because the one who spoke it is an eternal God. Amen. And the reason you have hope today of eternity is because you 1 Peter says this in verse 23 of chapter 1, being born again.

Anybody born again today? Come on, lift your hand. You've been born again. Let me tell you, Peter says being born again not of corruptible seed. Hallelujah. Not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. You have been born. You are begotten of something that is eternal today. You have been born of an eternal, incorruptible word. I don't know what form that word took when God began to speak. It is a miraculous thing to think that an eternal God who is spirit, immaterial, who has no physical apparatus as we have.

We've got vocal chords. We need to get vocal sometimes. We have vocal chords and we are able to transmit and communicate thoughts in our mind into words. We translate them. But the way that we do that is because we have breath in our body. The dead don't speak. The thing that gives you the ability to speak is because you breathe. And and the wind, the breath that you have, traverses over those vocal chords and they begin to vibrate. See, not every breath makes a sound, but when you speak, it is dependent upon your breathing.

You got to breathe to speak. Hallelujah. And so, however God did this, the way that we communicate with as human beings is by the vibrations, molecules colliding into each other, creating vibrations through vocal chords. But God is a spirit. He didn't have the physical apparatus that you and I have, but somehow, somehow he spoke a word, a command that broke all the barriers of silence of by simply starting with let. Let there be light. Listen, when God speaks let, it's not a concession. It's not permission.

It is a command. When God says let something be, it is not optional. It will come to pass because when God speaks, his words are backed by all the power that resides in him. When he speaks, it is settled. It is done. The origin of the attack in the garden that was planted east of Eden was this. Who said? Hath God said? Eve, did God say that? It wasn't an attack just on the words. It was an attack on the person who had said it. And she hadn't herself firsthand heard that message from God.

She heard it from Adam. And so he puts this doubt in her mind. Hath God said this? Or did Adam tell you that? And for the first time she hears a lie that she had never heard before. Everything that she had heard to this point was truth. And yet the devil injects a lie and a doubt by saying, "Who said this?" The person, I want to know who said this. And from the initial "Hath God said" spoken by the serpent in the garden that launched that attack, doubts and aspersions have been cast upon whether God actually communicates with human beings.

That is the downfall of many religion and the weakness of many religions is that they do not believe that you can have a personal relationship with God. I am telling you that this word here is all about revealing God to human beings and telling us the message of this book is, you have a God and he wants a people and there should be a relationship between that God and his people and we are so blessed today that we can enjoy a personal relationship. I still believe that God speaks to his people.

"Hath God said?" And so since the canonization of scriptures, since the words became codified, there have been a constant attack to discredit and to dismantle the word of God. Those attacks have intensified in the modern era and the most common thing, even though it's couched in different language, is, "Did God really say that? Do you really believe?" And that is the crux of the matter right there, folks. It is that God spoken, but do you believe that God spoke that? Amen. So, humanity is divided simply.

We don't like We don't like things that are just cut and dried. The world culture says there's got to be a lot of gray areas, right? We live in that that culture that says not everything's black and white. I'm telling you that in God's economy everything is black and white. It comes down to a yay or a nay. It comes down to either God said it or God did not say it. Amen. And so, humanity is accordingly divided simply into two camps. Hear me today. Believers.

I'm one of them. And unbelievers. It doesn't matter on the smorgasbord of sin what your particular delight might be. It doesn't matter. You either fall into the camp of yay, I believe this or nay, I don't believe it. It's not a matter of selectivity. It's not a matter of picking and choosing what I want to believe. If I open the pages of this book and I point to a scripture and it tells me something that I disagree with, I fall then into the camp of unbelief.

Hello. If I say at any point in this book, well, I don't believe that. I fall into the camp of unbelief. I can't say, well, I'll pick and choose. I'll take this part, but I don't like this part because I don't like particularly the philosophy that it's espousing. No, no, no, no, no. A thousand times no. We are addressed in Paul's letter to Corinth this way, verse 14 and 15 of chapter 6, 2 Corinthians. Watch this. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. It has to do with relationships.

All kinds of relationships. Don't be tied together with unbelievers. He didn't say, don't be tied or don't be yoked with drug addicts. He didn't say that. He didn't He didn't say, don't be don't be linked or tied to sexual perverts and pornographers. He didn't say that. He didn't have to pick pick out particular sins because he knew that the entire world falls into one of two camps. You either believe or you don't believe. Our young people don't need to be dating people that do not believe that book right there.

We don't need to be making associations that will pull us apart from what the word of God has said. We don't need to be affirming people who do not believe I will not give my blessing to a person who preaches other than the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sorry if that's offensive, but I'm telling you Paul said if we are an angel from heaven preach anything other than what we have preached, what you have heard, let that person be Well, we don't bless them. We don't say Godspeed.

We say let them be accursed. My Lord. I'm going to get in trouble today. But this is the word of God. The difference is the word for unbelievers in verse 14 and and infidels in verse 15 is exactly the same. It literally means no faith, not having any faith. I know it upsets people's apple carts today because we just encountered this. Cuz people want to believe everybody goes to heaven. There's even people sitting on church pews right here in Apostolic Pentecostal Church who literally believe that everybody goes to heaven.

There's this pluralistic idea that well, there's there's some little nuances, there's a little difference between us, but after all, they still believe in Jesus Christ. They they love God. Yeah, but is the God that they love one of their own creation or is it the God of this book right here? Hallelujah. We need to hear this. Not everybody goes to heaven. God's got a line of demarcation and it is a line that is called truth and and all unbeliever I know this is what the book says.

It says that all unbelievers are right along with the liars and the the dogs and the whoremongers and all those people that are going to be cast into the lake of fire. Unbelievers, just because you didn't believe what the word of God said. Yes, that's the truth. Not everybody is going to heaven. Only those who have believed and obeyed the word of God. It can be trusted. The attacks now come clothed in robes of academics and scientific method and pluralistic ideas and and and yet the beauty of it is, folks, that this word still remains.

After centuries and millennia of time that the word of God still remains. To paraphrase one of the great reformers, Theodore Beza, "Truth is the anvil THAT WEARS OUT ALL HAMMERS." HALLELUJAH. Thomas Carlyle in the late 19th century said, "No lie can live forever." And that's the truth. Every lie is going to be brought down. The entire universe that God has created is against any lies and the entire universe will move against the lie, but the truth will remain. It is forever settled in heaven. And so divided into camps of academics lower criticism.

They investigate the documents, the textual. I have done this extensively. I have looked at the documentation. You know the evidence for the word of God, how great it is. There are thousands, tens of thousands of of documents still extant today that point to the veracity of the word of God, that this scripture that we have is true. Somebody said in the examination of the theory of evolution that you could take all the evidence for evolution for the argument of evolution and you could put it in the back of a pickup truck and it wouldn't even fill up the bed of a pickup truck.

And yet, we've got scores of thousands of documents documentations and texts that tell us that the word of God has been carried from generation to generation without alteration, without modification, and it is true. It is absolutely true. I believe that physical evidences should be examined objectively. And and then they'll all come to the same conclusion. It won't make any difference because at the end of the day when the smoke clears and the dust settles, the word of God is true and every man's going to be a liar.

Hallelujah. The higher criticism, the historical, the literary, which is a structure in the scientific analysis. So, lower criticism examines higher criticism and analyzes things. The word becomes interpretative and subject to the biases of the analyst. The aim is usually not to prove but to disprove the Bible. This is the aim of the flesh, Satan, and the world to undermine faith. Now, I'm going to say something might shock you a little bit, but we don't know things. We don't know stuff. Right? We think we know, but there's some things we can't know.

We don't know. There are mysteries about God we don't know. If you expect me to bring God down and prove to you his existence, I can't do that. I can't bring you empirical evidence and enough data to prove the existence of God. I don't know. But I do believe. I do believe. So, the attack against faith usually comes in the form of knowledge. People want to bring you evidence and knowledge to prove or to disprove something, and it's all meant to undermine your belief. Let me tell you something.

If you haven't already learned this, belief is much stronger than knowledge. There's some ignorant people in this world, but they believe what they believe totally. There's a flat Earth Society. God bless them. They believe that the earth is flat, and they offer all kinds of explanations for that. There are people that believe that we never went to the moon, that we never landed on the moon. God bless them. There were people in Columbus's day that believed that he kept sailing along, he was going to fall off the earth.

People just believe stuff, and I can tell you from experience that people believe stuff, and I told my wife this morning, I don't even know where they get that. They just believe stuff. You got these investigators, you've probably seen the clips and the videos, or maybe the TV program. Uh paranormal investigations and and they go along and they and and you'll see everything's dark. They got the camera follow me this way. Did you hear that? And and and nobody else hears anything, right? But they are firmly convinced that there are ghosts in the house.

YOU CAN'T SHAKE. YOU CAN SHAKE KNOWLEDGE. You can change knowledge, but I'm telling you once you get a grasp on something and you believe it, that becomes nigh unshakable. It doesn't doesn't really matter what kind of evidence you might present to the contrary, people going to believe what people want to believe. The reason I'm here today, not because I know so much, but because I believe so much. I am confident Paul had four things that he said. He said, I know in whom I believe believed, know, believe, persuaded, committed.

That's That is our plight today. Know, I know in whom I believed. I know what I believed. I am persuaded in what I believe, and I am committed to what I believe. And that's what God expects. He doesn't expect us to know all things. He doesn't expect us to understand all things. He just wants us to believe. Because without faith, it is impossible to please God. As recorded in Hebrews, knowing is not the key and understanding is not really the key. The writer says in 4:2, "For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them."

"But the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it." You got to believe today. I don't need to convince this audience today that you you You got to believe. And we believe certain things, but we got to we got to put this into a different dimension, a a different level of belief. So, what is key to unlocking everything that God has is simply this: Do you believe that God said it? Do you believe? Huh, not God can. That's just That's just affirming the attributes of God.

That he's omnipotent, that he's omniscient, that he's omnipresent, that he can do anything, he knows everything, and he's everywhere. We can acknowledge that. But do you believe what he has said in his word? Do you believe? The line of demarcation is whether one believes that this book right here was not by the will of men. It is the It is the word of God, even though man was the instrument by which it was recorded. Let me give you some stats here. 92 times the Old Testament recorded "The word of the Lord came."

Over 200 times we read "The Lord said." 413 times the phrase "Thus saith the Lord." And I'm going to tell you I'm just simple enough to believe that if this word says that God said it, I am going to stand on the foundation of that declaration, knowing this first according to first 2 Peter 1:20, "Knowing this first that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

Listen, the first statement there removes the word as originating with human beings. All prophetic prophetic utterance, no prophecy of the scripture is of any private origin or interpretation. It doesn't carry the will or the intent of man, but it is having been driven or inspired, spoken to, and moved upon by the Holy Spirit. And that's when holy men of God spoke. Paul would reiterate this theme of inspiration to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16, a very familiar scripture. It says, "All scripture." Everybody say all. The stuff I agree with and the stuff I don't agree with.

All of it. All scripture given by inspiration of God. And it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. Hallelujah. That's the only direct statement in the New Testament that uses the inspiration. Inspiration of God. That's one word. It's not It's not three words in the in the Greek. Theopneustos, it means God-breathed. All scripture God-breathed it. Hallelujah. And when God breathes this word, it means that it has power. It's not just the word of men. But, brother, you can bank on what God has said.

There are more declarations of Jesus about the origin of the words. He said, "The words I speak, they're not my words. They're His words." He came to reveal what God was like to men. The litmus test Somebody believe this today? Mhm. That's about half of us. Does anybody believe this today? This word right here. This word, the litmus test of the inspiration of that book is this. And I'm not talking about a lot of technicalities today, and there's a reason for that. I don't believe we need to have an apologetic argument about whether this is or not.

The important thing and the crux of the issue, Brother Buddy, is do I believe this word right here is breathed out literally by God. Because if it is God-breathed, it means that behind this word is all the power of God breathed into this book. Now, do I believe this? Is it infused with the power of God? Or is it just a diminished, dusty, old piece of literature that I read and it's got some good things to say, but it really and it it can give me some good principles for living, but that is not, my friend, what this book is about.

This book is about revealing a God that is able to do all things. If you can believe, Jesus said, "All things are possible to him that believes." I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying today to inspire some faith in somebody. We say we believe, but do we really accept at face value the word of God? And when it says, "With his stripes I am healed," do I believe that? Not just that he can, but that I actually am. Leonard Ravenhill in 1959 wrote a book called Why Revival Tarrys.

It's one of the Christian classics. In chapter 8 of that book, on my in my particular copy it's page 69, chapter 8. It's called this, Unbelieving Believers. Unbelieving Believers. And he makes this statement, "My God, I wish this faith would rise in us today and a confidence in the word of God that if God said it, I I it emphatically." He said, "One of these days some simple soul will pick up the book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed."

We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a book to be believed and after that to be obeyed. I completely agree, Mr. Ravenhill, that the word of God is not a book just to be read as another piece of literature. God has breathed life into this book. Psalm 31:38 says this, "I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth, for thou has magnified thy word above all thy name."

I'm going to close with this. I'm not finished by any means. There were two times in the Bible that mentions, only four times, this word breathe in the Bible. Can you believe that? Four times in the Bible the word breathe is used. Two times. First in Genesis it says that God breathed. He breathed into Adam the breath of life and he became a living soul. The second time in Acts or in John, I'm sorry, John 22, 20:22. And when he had said this Jesus he breathed on them.

Adam got breathed on and the disciples got breathed on. And in both cases, what happens next was the animation of something that was dead. You were dead in trespasses and sin. Listen, this is the benefit of this book right here cuz when I open it up, there's something There is still something that is fragrant about this. There is still an aroma about this book that hits me with impact. And when I believe when I open it up, THERE IS SOMETHING THAT BREATHES NEW life into old bones.

THERE IS SOMETHING THAT GETS A HOLD OF MY SPIRIT. When I open this book and the word of God begins to breathe again into my spirit. That is the power, my friend, of believing the word of God. Let's stand together. I'll ask you again, do you believe it? Do you believe what's in this book? Do you believe that in this service today that all things are possible to him that believes? Do you believe that what's the expectation here today? What's going to happen here today? You know what it's dependent and contingent upon?

It's contingent upon whether I believe. Lord, I believe. Do you believe today? Let's thank him for his word. Father, we thank you. Thank you for this word that is forever settled. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. It's true. Regardless of what men say, it's true. And I'm believing you that in this further service this morning you're going to breathe life. Your spirit is going to move because your word is going to go forth. Let it be done in Jesus name. We thank you for it. Let the church say amen.

Let's take a break.