DATE: – SUNDAY 23RD AUGUST, 2020
TOPIC: – THE POWER OF THE WORD OF GOD (Part 9)
BIBLE PASSAGE: – Psalm 119: 6 – 80
MEMORY VERSE: – “The law of Thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver” (Psalm 119:72)
INTRODUCTION: – The Bible is God’s unfailing, true witness of His saving activity for humanity, which He accomplished through Jesus Christ. For this reason, the Scripture is in comparable and forever finished: its truths and authority relate to and apply to all things of this world and life. No human words or declarations of religious institutions are equal to the Bible authority.
LESSON OUTLINES
1) The Wonder Of Its Language
Another wonderful thing is that this Book was not written in Anthens, the seat of learning in Greece, nor in Alexandria in Egypt. It was not written by men who received their inspiration from the ancient sources of wisdom. It was written by men who lived in Palestine. One was a farm hand, another was a shepherd and some were fishermen. They were men of no literacy reputation. And yet from such men has come a Book that God in His mysterious power has so divested of all provincialism that it has become the standard of the language of the most literary nations of the world.
How do you explain then the fact that these unlearned men, uncosmopolitan men with all their provincialism and exclusiveness and insularity, were able to write a book which has become not only the book of the Jews, but the Book of the whole world oday?
2) The Wonder of Its Preservation
Another wonderful thing about the Bible is that it has stood ages of terocious and incessant persecution. Century after century men have tried to burn it and to bury it. Crusade after crusade has been organized to extripate it. Kings of the earth set themselves, and rulers of the earth.
Diocletian, the Roman Emoerior, in 303AD inaugurated the most terrific on slaught that the world has known upon a book. Every Bible almost was destroyed; myraids of Christians perished; and a column of triumph was erected over an exterminated Bible with the inscriptuion; Extincto nomine Christianoram” (i.e. extinct is the name of Christians).
And yet, not many years after the Bible came forth as Noah from the ark to r-people the earth, and in the year 325AD Contantine enthroned the Bible as the Infallible Judge of Truth in the First General Council.
Then followed the prolonged medieval persecutions. We all know how the Church of Rome denied the Scriptures to the people. The Church of Rome never trusted the people with the Bible. For ages it was practically an unknown book. Martin Luther was a grown-up man when he said that he had never seen a Bible in his life.
Not only so: in consequence of edicts of councils, and bans and bulls of Popes, Bibles were burned and Bible readers sent by the Inquisition to rack and flame.
Yet perhaps the worst opposition to the Bible has been during the last two hundred and fifty years. Its butterest foes, curiously enough, were men who claimed liberty of thought, and Bolingbroke and Hume and Voltaire seemed so confident of the extermination of the Bible that the Frenchman declared that a hundred years after his day not a Bible would be found save as an antiquarian curiosity.
Then came the German rationalistic host with the fiercest and deadliest of all the attacks.
Yet here the Bible is today, stronger than ever. It stands, and will stand. The adversaries have done their worst. They have charged their heaviest charge. They have fire their deadliest volley.
Yet, in spite of all these age-long persecutions and assaults, the Word of the lord is having free course and is being glorified.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The Bible is the very life and Word of God. Down to the exact words of the original manuscripts, the Bible is without error, absolutely true, trust worthy and infallible. This s true not only when it speaks of ethical values, moral standards and spiritual salvation, but it is also without error on all subjects about which it speaks, including history and the universe (2Pet.2:220-21).
The inspired Word (2Tim.3:16) of God is the expression of God’s wisdom and character and is, therefore, able to give the expression of god’s wisdom and character and is, therefore, able to give ultimate wisdom and spiritual life through faith in Christ (Mt.14:4; Jh.6:63).
QUESTIONS
- What categories of people were used of God to write the Bible?
- Give the brief history of attempts to exterminate the Bible.