It's called holy. His book is
holy. His angels are holy. His people
are holy. And I want to talk about the
holy scriptures. It says here in verse 16, all
scripture, all of it, given by inspiration of God. That word
inspiration means to be breathed. Breathed. of God. God breathed
into existence the Word of God. And it's profitable for doctrine.
The word doctrine means teaching. Profitable for doctrine, for
teaching. Profitable for reproof. It's the only thing that can
reproof us and make the reproof stick. I can reproof somebody
and it won't amount to anything, but if God reproofs a man. If
the Holy Spirit's in a person and God reproofs them, they've
been reproofed. It's profitable for correction. And how often
we, how thank God that we were corrected from our false doctrine,
from our heresies, from our false hope and false trust and corrected
and set straight according to the scriptures. And then they're
profitable for instruction in righteousness, in the righteousness
of Christ, in the righteousness of God, in the righteousness
revealed in the scriptures, in the righteousness that man needs.
That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all
good works." Our Lord Jesus one day told the Pharisees when they
began to ask Him some questions, and He said to them, He said,
You do err, not knowing the Scriptures. That's the first thing you charge
them with, not knowing the Scriptures. Can you imagine how offended
they were? how offended they were when their
whole life was revolved around studying the Old Testament, studying
every jot and tittle of the law, copying them. Do you know how
offended they were, how angry it made them, how shocked they
were that the Lord Jesus Christ would look at the doctors and
lawyers and teachers and scribes of the Scriptures and says, you
do err not knowing the Scriptures. Now how important, let me ask
you this, how important is the Holy Scriptures to you? How important
are they to me? It says, I just read here, that
they are scriptures given by God, inspired of God, breathed
of God. They're not the invention of
men. And here in verse 14, excuse me, verse 15 here, where we're
looking at right now, it says that from a child thou hast known
the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation
through faith which is in Christ Jesus. The scriptures alone are
able to make a man wise unto salvation. And let me show you
a verse of scripture over in 2 Peter chapter 2. Turn over 2 Peter chapter 2.
Let me show you a couple of, excuse me, 2 Peter chapter 1.
And let me tell you something about God's holy scriptures. God's holy scriptures. I thought,
you know, about the last couple of years, I thought about putting
a reading schedule. in our bulletin every week. I
know some preachers that do that. You know, they give a reading
schedule. They start out January, the first day in January, and
if you follow this reading schedule, you'll get through the whole
Bible for the year. And they put out these reading schedules,
and I've started to do it two or three times, but I got to
thinking, and I'm just speaking for me now, I probably wouldn't
follow it myself. Because I have my own way of
studying. I have my own way of dealing with the Scriptures.
I have my own way of what I want to read and how I want to be
led to read. I don't want somebody to set a schedule for me. By God's grace, I want Him to
lead me in what I should read and how I should read it. But
I do get through the Scriptures. But look what He said here in
2 Peter 1.20. He said, Knowing this first, that no prophecy
of the Scriptures of any proper interpretation. Now, what's that
talking about? That's talking about the men
who spoke the Word of God and gave heed to the Word of God.
They didn't privately interpret the Scriptures and then write
them. They didn't privately interpret
them and their definition of them and what they thought of
them. For he says, the prophecy came not in old times by the
will of man. They didn't do this of their
own. But holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost. That's what that means. Now,
beloved, thy Lord himself says, This heaven and earth shall pass
away, but my word, not one job or one tittle, shall fail from
it. And he says, Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.
And he says, Your word is a lamp unto my feet. And you need a
lamp when you stand and speak. And we have a lamp for our feet
to see where we are, where we're standing. And when we have that
lamp around us, we see the darkness that's around us. And then he
said it's a light for our path. And when you're walking through
this world, and when you're walking through the darkness of this
world, the scriptures are a light for our path while we walk through
this world. And the Holy Scriptures, let
me tell you this, the Holy Scriptures is the foundation of all true
religion. All true religion. And if they
aren't inspired of God, divinely inspired, then we have no foundation
for our faith whatsoever. If they speak not according to
the law and the testimony, it's because there's no light in them. And that rich man in hell, he
says, if you'll just go tell my brothers, so that they don't
come to this awful place. Our Lord said, if they won't
hear Moses and the prophet, they wouldn't believe if one even
rose from the dead and went and told them. And that's exactly
what's happened to the world. One rose from the dead, and how
many believe on him? How many was there when he rose
from the dead and still didn't believe on him? So you see, beloved,
if the scriptures didn't come from God, where did they come
from? Where did they come from? Certainly bad men couldn't have
authored it. An angel couldn't have been the author of it, because
it tells about angels. And the Scriptures are just not
some words about God or words from God, but it's the very Word
of God itself. When we open the Bible, no matter
where we open it up at, I don't care where you, whether it's
in the genealogy, whether it's in Genesis, whether it's in Exodus,
whether it's in Revelation, whether it's in Matthew, wherever you
go, every time you open the Scriptures, you're reading, Thus saith the
Lord. That's what we're reading, Thus
saith the Lord. And this Bible is a supernatural, the Scriptures
are supernatural and miraculous in the things that they do and
accomplish in this world. Now, you and I know, we've seen
this happen so many times. You get three, four, five people
together, and one of them tells a story. By the time it gets
to the fifth one, how much does it resemble what the first one
said? Don't resemble hardly any of
it, does it? Huh? And somebody'll start telling
something, and you'll start telling it the way you see it, and they'll
say, well, you just go ahead and tell it the way you know
it. And so that's what happens. I mean, if you get four or five
people who are strangers, and try to get them to tell them
all the same story. Let them go from one another
to a stranger, to a stranger, to a stranger. How do you reckon
they would get the thing told? You reckon the whole thing, the
story, would be in harmony at all? The scriptures, the holy scriptures
are not that way. You see, here's a book, my Bible,
my particular Bible here, this Cambridge, has 1,545 pages in
it, this particular Bible of mine. Yours may have more, yours
may have less. It's according to what size Bible
you have. But I know mine has 1,545 pages
in it. And this book, this book was
written by over 30 people. All of them different type people.
Those who wrote it, were men of every rank and every class. Moses was a lawgiver and a historian. David was a warlike king. Solomon
was a peaceful king. Amos says, I'm not a prophet
nor a prophet's son. All I do is herd cattle. That's
all I do. Matthew was a publican, a tax
collector. Luke was a physician. Paul was
an educated Pharisee. Peter and John were just ordinary,
everyday fishermen. Nehemiah, Ezra, and Zechariah,
they were all priests. And Daniel, he dwelled in the
court of the king and was a statesman. And these men, thirty-something
different men, they all lived in different times in God's space
of time over a period of 1,500 years. Most of them never knew
or saw one another. Yet, you can take Genesis to
Revelation, and there's a perfect harmony and a perfect unity,
and Moses lived 4,000 years before some of the other men even began
to write. Or 2,000 years, excuse me, before
he began to write. You see, they all tell the same
story. Can you find one of them that
didn't give any different account of God? They all gave one account
of God. Every single one of them gave
the same account of God. Every single one of them gave
the one account of man. Man's a worm. Man's a grasshopper. Man's a sinner. Man's depraved. Man's shaken in iniquity and
conceived in sin. They all give one account of
Christ. All of them say the same thing
about Christ. It starts out there with just
a dim light, and Genesis, and by the time He comes on the scene,
He's in high noon when He walks onto the scene, and beloved,
and He's crucified on His cross. And there's only, they all give
one account of salvation. And there's no contradiction
among these thirty-something men. who rode at different times
in a space of over 1,500 years, how can they all be unified in
harmony over the same things? How can it happen? Me and you
can't even tell. We forget what, you know, we're
a mess. But let me tell you something.
These things that I just said tell us something about the Holy
Scriptures. They tell us that this blessed,
the Scriptures, the Holy Scriptures, the antiquity of them. There
were no human historians in existence that reached further than Noah's
flood. Nobody. But the scriptures tell us of
things before time ever began. It reveals things to us and tells
us about things before God ever put anybody on this planet. It
tells us of Satan's Satan fell before God ever made the earth.
Our Lord Jesus said, I beheld Satan fall as lightning from
heaven. It tells us of the eternal covenant of grace. It's called
eternal. So that means that it started before time started,
and it'll continue going on after time ceases to be. It tells us
about Christ as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
And God said to Job, gird up yourself like a man and answer
me. Where was you? when I laid the
foundation of the earth. Where was Him when I put the
stars in the sky? Where was Him when the sons of
God shouted for joy? Where was you, Job? You want
to get down here and talk about all you know? I want to know
if you want to know what I've done. And, oh, beloved, so they
tell us about this. Oh, my, the Holy Scriptures tells
us about things before time ever began and things that happened.
And how in the world can you believe in things that happened
before time if it ain't the blessed book it tells us? And then the
Holy Scriptures. The Holy Scriptures have been
miraculously preserved in all ages. Do you know from the time
that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, it's called
a Pentateuch. Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. He wrote those first five books.
That's all the Jews had for a long time. And then Joshua. then Judges, then Ruth. And you
go down through this. And that's all they had. But
how in the world? And then the New Testament came
into existence in about 100 AD, 125 AD. And listen, what happened? How were these blessed scriptures
preserved? Not in the, you know, they had
Hebrew. They had three different languages.
How was the scriptures preserved? They had lots of people trying
to destroy them. In fact, Satan in the Garden
of Eden, the first thing he done was he cast doubt on the Word
of God. Has God said? First thing he said, has God
said? Do you reckon God meant what he said? He said, oh, he
said, you're going to die? No, you ain't going to die. No,
God's a loving God. He's a just God. He's a merciful
God. He don't have no justice. He
won't cause you to die. And I'll tell you what he's doing.
He has so blinded you. He wants all the glory to Himself. He doesn't want you to know anything.
He wants you dependent on Him. And He said, He's hiding this
from you because you'll be like Him. You'll be like a god. And
the devil tried to destroy the Word right then and there. But
he didn't succeed. And the Catholic Church. Here's
the difference in what they call Protestantism. We're not Protestants.
We're Baptists. And we're not Protestants, and
we never protested anything, you know. But the Catholic Church,
and this is what they taught, and this is how they destroy
the Scriptures, and try to destroy them. They say the truth is in
the Church. It's not in the Scriptures themselves.
They tell you that the truth is in the Church, and the truth,
if you have it, you've got to go to the priest, you've got
to go to the Church, And they can change themselves. The Pope
can offer a bull or an eddy or change the faith to bring out
something new. And you have to abide by it. And then you have the Pharisees
with their traditions. Our Lord says you do make void,
nullify the Word of God by your traditions. And then you take
all the attacks that science and philosophers and men have
made on the Holy Scriptures, and yet they've been preserved
from the time that Moses wrote his first word until John wrote
his last word and said, Amen, even so, come Lord. From in the
beginning, God, until John says, Amen, even so, come Lord Jesus. Between those lids, those words,
first and last, We have these Holy Scriptures been preserved
all that time. You know what our Lord said?
He said, search the Scriptures. Search them. You know why you
should search them? Because they tell about me and
the salvation that's in me. And oh, beloved, let me tell
you this. The Holy Scriptures contain truth that only God Himself
could give. Only God. Look over here with
me in 1 Corinthians 2. The Holy Scriptures contain truths
that only God could give. You know, the Scriptures are
full of mysteries. Full of mysteries. Full of mysteries. Full of mysteries. Look what he said here. Paul's
telling Corinthians, he said, we speak the wisdom of God among
them that are perfect or among them that are mature. Yet, we're
not talking 1 Corinthians 2.6. Howbeit we speak wisdom among
them that are perfect, those that are mature, yet not the
wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that
come to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery,
even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world
under our glory. And none of the princes in this
world knew these mysteries of God, knew this wisdom of God,
knew this wisdom that God ordained. None of the princes or the mighty
men, the popular men, the powerful men of this world knew, for had
they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Now here's some of the mysteries.
How many mysteries are there found in the Scriptures? They're
so profound that man or angel could not have known them. Look
what he said in verse 9. But as it is written, I have
not seen, nor ear hath heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that
love him. But listen, but God hath revealed
them unto us by Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all
things, the deep things of God. Now, the scriptures are full
of mysteries. Let me give you some of them.
That the eternal God, He who will have His eternity, the one
called, which says there that unto us, a child is given unto
us, a son is given unto us, a child is born. That the eternal God
should be born of a woman and should come into this world and
limit Himself to time. When He inhabits eternity, come
here and limit himself to time and limit himself to a space
and a place. Be born and live in a little
old town named Bethlehem. Be born and limit himself to
a place like Galilee and Jerusalem and Bethany and can only walk
so many miles a day. That God, the Eternal God, would
do that. No wonder Paul said, great is
the mystery of godliness. Oh, beloved, that he, here's
a mystery, that he whose voice is as a multitude of waters should
hear him cry and scream and cry as a baby as he laid in a cradle
in his mama's house, and hear him cry when the Scriptures tell
us that his voice shook the whole mountains. That he, what a mystery,
that he who rules the universe and holds the breath of every
living soul in his hands, and holds the destiny of everyone
and everything in this world in his hands, the same one who
does that should hang on his mother's breast and grow up from
an infant to a man. Oh, what mistress! What mistress! Oh, that the Prince of Life Life
itself. You remember Paul preaching Sunday
morning about the meaning of life. And the Son, and he that hath
the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son hath
not life. But that life that was manifested,
that was sent from God, that the Prince of Life should die? That the Lord of Glory should
be put to shame before His own world? that he created? What a mystery, that a sin, sin,
horrible, black, oh God, awful sin, should be punished to the
full, and yet be pardoned and put away until God says Himself,
I don't know where it's at, I can't find it, nor remember it. Ah,
that's a mystery. Oh, and I tell you, here's another
mystery, that God had a Savior before there was ever one sin
committed. That, oh my, before I ever was,
God had a Savior for me. And here's another mystery, that
God purposed the fall of our father Adam, and yet is not the
author of sin. Adam done just exactly what he
wanted to do. That's a mystery. And all that
is here. You talk, this is one of those
mysteries that Paul talks about. Behold, I show you a mystery.
He says we all shall sleep, but that there would be a man who
was crucified, dead, took him down, had a funeral for him,
put him in his tomb, And that he came out of that tomb by his
own power, and showed himself alive for forty days by many
infallible proofs. Oh my! And let me tell you something,
if any of these things ever entered into your mind, would any one
of these things have ever entered into your mind, had not God revealed
them in the Holy Scriptures. Couldn't have ever thought of
such a thing. We'd have never thought of it. And the Holy Scriptures,
beloved, tells us what is to come. It tells us what's going
to happen. It told us from the beginning
what was going to happen. It tells us now what's going
to happen. You know, there's an end coming to this thing.
But the Holy Scriptures told us what was coming. It told us
that, Behold, a virgin was conceiving thy son, and thou shalt call
his name Immanuel. 700 years later, an angel, Gabriel, came to Mary and says, you're
going to have a son. And he is going to be Immanuel,
God with us. And sure enough, it happened. God told Israel, Abraham, He
says, told Jacob, He said, your descendants are going to go to
Egypt. They're going to stay down there four and thirty years.
At the end of four and thirty years, I'm going to go get them.
And to the day, Four hundred and thirty years later, God went
down and got them and brought them up out of Egypt. And you
know, you look this up yourself, thirty-seven, thirty-seven prophecies
have been fulfilled concerning our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Thirty-seven of them. And let
me tell you, talking about the Holy Scriptures, look at what
the men who wrote the Holy Scriptures said about themselves. You know
what they said about themselves? The only people I know of, now
when you write bargains about people, mention things about
yourself and you put it in writing, you don't write bad things about
yourself, you remember the best. You know, most of us got a revisionist
history, you know. You know, we remember things
the way we want them to be. But men don't write bad things
about themselves, they only tell the good things. But the men
who wrote the scriptures weren't that way. Moses himself, do you
know what he said about himself? He talked about his anger and
his patience. And how because he smoked the
rock and didn't sanctify God, that God wouldn't let him go
into the promised land. He told Israel man, he told him
before he went up on the Mount of Olives, he said, I smoked
a rock. You angered me. Oh, beloved. In David, you read the Psalms,
and David tells of his own adultery and the murder that he committed.
You read the Psalms, and he tells about his own sin. Abraham, here's
the father of the faithful, and yet he lacked the faith to go
down into Egypt to serve. He and his wife, she had to be
his sister. Afraid somebody would take her from him. Jonah, you
know what he said about himself? He said, God called him to go
to Nineveh. He said, I wasn't going to go. And he fled from
the presence of the Lord. God went and got him and brought
him back. Pitcher salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. And then
when he sat down under a gourd tree, he got mad at God and said,
why did you send me here to start with? Because I know what you're
going to do. You just wasted my time and yours
both. That's how angry he got. He got
angry at God, and God said, it does you well to be angry. He said, would you have been
happier if I would have destroyed them? Would you have been happier
if I had killed them all? Because I gave you a message,
and they listened to it, and they repented, and the king,
do you think you would have been happier if I had killed them
all? That's about the way some people
feel, you know. The harder God is, the better
they like Him. But, oh, He delights to show
mercy. And then Peter. Oh, what it says about Peter.
Oh, my. He's an apostle! The men in Holy Scriptures took
all the glory from themselves and gave it all to God. They
said, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us. Be gloried, but unto
thy name, for thy mercy and for thy true sake. Oh, they humbled
themselves before God. The prophets, instead of talking
about how near to God they were and how powerful a preacher they
were, they banged on themselves. They cried out, Woe is me! I'm
undone. And when God revealed Himself
to men in the Scriptures, they didn't jump up and down and holler.
Wayne Boyd was telling me, he went to a funeral the other day,
a young lady that was 19 years old got killed, knew her dad
real well, and the preacher got up and said that he's talking,
and he said, and God spoke to me and said, Johnny! He said,
I set him off just like that. God speak from heaven, called
him Johnny. When he spoke in the Scriptures, you find men
in the Scriptures, what did they do? John fell as a dead man. Daniel says, my covenant has
turned into corruption. When the God of glory appeared
unto our father Abraham and Mestapoteinu, you know what he did? He got
down on his face before God. Jacob called himself a worm and
no man. And then this generation will
say, God spoke to me. God ever speaks to a human being,
he'll find out one thing, that he ain't worth, as Scott used
to say, a warm, pitiless spirit. Ain't that right? And that's
what God will make you to know. And in making you know that,
you'll take your eyes off yourself and set them on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and you'll find Him to be all you need for time and
eternity. And you dare not, dare not, dare
not ever look to anybody else or any place else for any hope
at all before God in this world and the world to come. Oh, my,
men in the Scriptures are not like men today. In all the Holy
Scriptures, and let me tell you this, the Holy Scriptures have
a profound and effectual power upon men's hearts. Oh, the power
that God uses in the Scriptures to break men's hearts. He said,
is not my word a hammer to break in pieces? Is not my word a fire
to burn? Is not my word And what is it
to the champ? And, oh, beloved, it has the
power, and the power of the Holy Spirit to take a man's heart
and change it, take his mind and change it, take his soul
and change it, change his mind, change his thoughts, change his
views, change everything about him radically so. The Scriptures
tells us that the Word tells us in Hebrews 4, the Scripture,
the Word of God is quick, it's alive, it's powerful, sharper
than any two-edged sword. It divides asunder, cuts in two. The thoughts, the joints and
morals of a man and deserves the thoughts and intents of his
heart. And men, by reading the scriptures
and hearing them preached, have been changed dramatically so. Paul told the Thessalonians,
he says, brethren, knowing your election of God, how do you know
they're one of God's elect, Paul? He says, because the gospel.
came unto you, not just in word, but in the power of the gospel,
the power of the Holy Ghost, and it came with much assurance
that this is God speaking. And oh, I tell you, you may find
other words that warm your heart. I was watching something last
night about a little girl, and they thought she was lost, and
oh my goodness, I was scared. You know how you get involved
in something, and when they found her, I got a little tears in
my eyes. I said, oh, they found the girl. They found her. She's
okay. There's a lot of things that can warm your heart. But
there ain't but one thing that can change your heart. And that's
the gospel and the power of God. There's lots of things that can
warm it, but only one thing can change it, and that's the Scripture.
Look with me over to 2 Corinthians 3, see what I'm telling you about.
You're in 1 Corinthians 2 right now. Look over to 2 Corinthians
3. Go over to your right just a
little bit. Scriptures will transform the
heart. It'll change it. And they'll comfort the heart.
Is there anything that can comfort your heart like the Scriptures
can? Is there anything that can revive
your heart like the Scriptures can? We come in here sometimes.
I've come in here a lot of times on Sunday morning, and my heart
gets just cold as a wedge, lifeless. And I pray, Lord, have mercy
on the congregation. That they've got to hear me.
And then I get up in God's some way or another by the Scriptures,
by the Spirit of God. Revives my very heart itself.
And how many times have you come here, and you cold, and you tired,
and you weary, and you with burdens on your heart, and burdens on
your mind. And the Scriptures come, and your heart just leaves
the inside of you. And you leave feeling wonderful. Look what it says here, talking
about the scriptures, how they transfer, holy scriptures change
our hearts. Here in verse, St. Corinthians
3, 3, 4, as much as you are manifestly declared to be the epistle of
Christ, ministered by us. Now listen, he says, now when
I look at you all, I see a letter of Christ. When I look at you,
I see an epistle of Christ, written not with ink, Your story wasn't
written with ink, but with the spirit of the living God. Not
in tables of stone like they've done in the law, but in fleshly
tables of the heart. God wrote on your heart. Wrote
Christ on your heart. And oh, beloved, every believer,
every believer has the Holy Spirit. Every believer has been taught
of God. And so they need nobody, nobody to interpret Scripture
for them. They can interpret themselves. They can read them
for themselves. They can understand them for themselves. And I hope
everybody here reads the Scriptures for themselves, understands them
for themselves, and listens to them for themselves. And this
is when I'm going to close with this verse of these Scriptures
right here. And our Lord Jesus Christ, after He resurrected
from the dead, He says this. when he met with his disciples
in the upper room, he said unto them, These are the words which
I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things
must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses,
and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding,
that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them,
Thus it is written, and thus it behoove Christ to suffer,
and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance
and remission of sins should be preached in his name among
all nations, starting right here at Jerusalem." That's what our
Lord said about it. Oh, what do the Scriptures mean
to you? What do they mean to me? Holy
Scriptures. Nothing like them in this world.