Jack Graham - The Transforming Power of God's Word - Part 1

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Take your Bible and turn to 2 Timothy, chapter 3. 2 Timothy, chapter 3, and we’re going to look at verses 16 and 17 to start. The Bible says: «All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work». This is the Bible. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. More copies have been printed and produced of the Bible and in more languages to more people than any other book in history. There is a book that is an all-time best-seller, not the book of the month, but the Book of the ages and it’s the Bible.

Number one. Whatever’s second is a distant second, runner-up because the Bible is the Book of all books. Every Sunday and every day, the Bible is read, studied, preached, lived, in every nation on every continent, and been translated into every major language in the world throughout history and is now currently also being translated to tribal groups, groups all over the world, every crevice of the planet, people groups. It’s the Word of God. It’s the word that we preach; it’s what we proclaim, the Word of God and testimony of Jesus. But what is it about this Book that is so popular? What is it about the Bible that still lives? We believe that God wrote a Book. This is His Book. It’s a holy Book. And that’s what sets the Bible apart from every other book in all of history.

When we speak of the Scriptures, and that’s a word that’s used in the Bible itself in the Bible, The Scriptures. These are called the Holy Scriptures. Paul spoke to Timothy of the Holy Scriptures that he had learned since he was a youth. This is the Bible. And when you speak of the Bible, this is the very words of God. I listened to a podcast this week. It was actually an interview of a psychiatrist, an expert in human behavior. And he spoke of holding a human brain in his hands. Can you imagine that? He literally held a brain. And he said when he held this brain in his hands, he contemplated all the thoughts and the memories and experiences and life, all in that brain. A soul departed, the brain in effect represents a life, a person.

Of course, of your heart, your lungs, your circulatory system, your cardiovascular system, but the brain houses this wonderful history of your life. When you hold a brain in your hand, you’re holding life and the memory of that life. And as I heard that man talk about holding a brain, I thought about holding a Book in my hand that contains the mind of God, the thoughts of God, the intents of God, the ways and the wonders of God! That God, of course, way beyond the Book and way beyond a brain as we could know it, is the brain of God, the mind of God! But when you pick up this book, this contains God. It’s alive, this Book because He is alive! He has revealed Himself in a multiple of ways. One, He reveals Himself in creation. We just worshipped to the God of wonders, the God of the galaxies, the God of creation. And when we look into the sky and see the wonders of His glory, «The heavens declare the glory of God», we realize that God has spoken.

And as Frances Schaeffer said a number of years ago, «God has spoken; He is not silent, and He speaks in the wonders and the glory of His creation». This is called among theologians and people who study such things, general revelation, in that God has revealed Himself in the skies, in the wonders of creation. But, of course, general revelation, the revelation of creation, that can be ambivalent, can’t it? There are times we look at tragedies in the world and hurricanes and tornadoes and all the vast kinds of crises of nature, and all the rest, and we wonder, «Well, what does that say then about God? How can we know or understand a God who created all of this and yet there is in the wonders of creation the horrors of a world and a system that is in distress»?

So general revelation, which means a revelation to all people. Everyone can see, Paul talked about this in the heavens; that in the book of Romans, chapter 1, that we see the invisible hand of God at work in His creation. But what does creation say? It’s incomplete. God also speaks in the human consciousness. Every person who is born, is born with a God-conscious. That is, an inclination, an intuitive desire to know God; the one who made us, the one who created us and placed in us an awareness of being that thinks! We have a conscience and that conscience seeks after God. That conscience can be damaged by sin and the conscience of a human being can even be destroyed and so hardened that the conscience can no longer speak. But there is a conscience. All of the people through the ages had it. Those big questions that human being ask, like: «Who am I and why am I here»?

Those college university questions that people ask. «What is this all about? What am I all about? What is life all about? Is there a God? Can I know Him»? That’s the conscience that God has created and the ability to know Him. The conscience, like creation, is incomplete. That’s a general thing. But God has given us something more than a natural revelation, and that is a supernatural revelation, and the supernatural revelation is what He has given to us in Christ in the Bible. Christ perfectly reveals who God is and God has revealed Christ in Christ Himself, who is the living Word of God, the incarnate Word of God. «In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God». Speaking of Jesus. «And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory; the glory of the only begotten of the Father».

So Jesus is the living Word of God; He walked in a body. But God also recorded this revelation in a Book and that Book is the Bible. So in the skies, in the spirit of a human being, in the Scriptures, in the Savior God reveals Himself. We use three words that describe what we believe about the Bible. One word, you saw it show up in the scripture that we read just a moment ago. «That all Scripture is inspired by God», breathed out, God breathed. Do you know why this Book lives? It’s because the breath of God is in it. The life of God is in His Word, the living Word of God. Inspired, all Scripture, God breathed. God spoke through human authors, for sure. But they wrote down His words! God wrote this Book. Inspired in every part, inspired! «All Scripture is given by inspiration of God».

This is God’s Book, inspired, breathed out by God. No wonder, it lasts, because it lives. «Grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever». So inspiration is a word. Then infallible is another word we use to describe the Bible. Infallible, in that it is the truth of God without any error. It’s all the truth of God, and because all the Bible is true, not just the parts you like, but everything in the Bible is true. It is therefore, trustworthy. It is infallible! The infallible Word of God. And there’s a third word that we use to describe the Bible and that is inerrant, which means without error. The Bible is not inspired just in spots or in thought or in big ideas. But just like mathematics, You cannot have mathematics without numbers, you cannot have a message without words; you cannot have a Word without words, the Word of God!

So Jesus said, «Not a jot or a tittle», not even a punctuation point in God’s Word will pass away. All the words of God are inspired. «Jack Graham, how can you be so sure»? And, no doubt, there are some skeptics among us, or listening today, or maybe you’re wondering, or maybe you’ve had questions and maybe you grew up knowing about the Bible, believing the Bible. Now one of the problems we’ve got in church and churches today is that many people grow up around the Bible but they don’t know their Bible. The lack of understanding and reading of the Bible among Christians is a disaster today. Many people don’t know what their Bible, the first thing about what their Bible is even about.

You say, «I’m a Christian but I don’t know about the Bible». And you read all the numbers and all the data and all the statistics that are out there today and you see that many professing Christians and church-members do not have a biblical view of life, a biblical view of the world. What we’re talking about when we are speaking of the Bible is that we learn to live and give our lives through the lens of Scripture, that we don’t look at the world, we don’t look at the Scripture through the lens of the world, but we look at the world through the lens of Scripture. That we see everything through what God has said! How can you be so sure? What’s the evidence? I can’t prove the Bible to you or to anyone else. Not my role to prove the Bible. I can only point a person to the evidence. And you choose to believe the evidence or not. But this is the Bible.

Let me start by challenging you to investigate the claims of the Bible. In the moments that we have left, let’s talk about the claims of God’s Word, the claims of the Bible. The Bible itself. And the Bible claims inspiration for itself. In 2 Peter, chapter 1 and verse 21, the Bible says that «holy men of old spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit». Not by the will of man, but men spoke from God. You often see in the Bible, you read it, both testaments of the Bible, God speaking with words like this: «And the word of Lord said», and then He spoke it through a person. «God declared», «God spoke». These authors there wrote it down, this supernatural.

Remember, we use the word not natural but supernatural, this supernatural spiritual breathed, Spirit breathed, powerful word of God. These authors claim to speak not just about God, but for God! And there’s a big difference! They were «carried along by the Holy Spirit» when God gave them His word. The idea of carried along here is a picturesque word in the language in the New Testament. It’s a portrait of a ship with sails and the winds blowing the sails, and the ship being guided by the wind in the sails. That’s the word used here by Peter when he’s describing how God inspired His Word, as these were carried along. The Holy Spirit breathed it out. Whether it was Moses or David or Daniel or Jeremiah or Isaiah or Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, all of these were breathed upon and through and by the Holy Spirit.

Jeremiah 1:9 says: «I have put My words in your mouth». There’s no better declaration of inspiration of scripture than that! «I have put My words in your mouth». So this is way, way, way beyond human inspiration; this is holy inspiration! And the word holy, we just sang of the holiness of God, it means unique, distinct, altogether different. The Scriptures are the Holy Spirit inspired Word of God. So not inspiration like an inspired human author. Shakespeare may be inspiring to some who like such things. I actually like Shakespeare. But that’s inspiring but it’s not inspiration; it’s not God-breathed; it’s human breathed. God has written a Book and it’s the story of salvation and redemption in Christ.

And I would suggest that you read the last chapter of the Book before you even get started in the Bible because the last chapter in the Book tells us of a risen Savior, a God who wins! Jesus won and has won for us! And our victory is in Him! And the whole story that begins in Genesis, chapter 1 and creation and all the prophecies, all the patriarchs and all of the Pentateuch and all of the Gospels and all the letters, all of this is about this one story of a God who loves you and gave His Son on the cross to die for you. All of the story, to rise again on the third day, is all about this story of Jesus! It is direct, it is dynamic, it is deified!

These are not human computers writing this, like machines. This is not just dictation, for sure. The vocabulary of the writers from Moses to David to Paul to the rest, you see their personalities, their background, their experience. But when they wrote, they wrote what God gave them; they wrote the very words of God! And so there’s not anything in your Bible that doesn’t need to be there; nor is there anything omitted from your Bible that needs to be there! These human authors by divine inspiration gave us this Word!

And whatever you may say or think about the Bible, you have to agree that the Bible claims this for itself! That’s why the devil has tried to distort it, deny it, disrupt the message of the Bible; it’s been banned; it’s been booed; it’s been burned; canceled; criticized; scrutinized, but the Word of God lives! And millions and millions of people throughout the generations have staked their lives on the truth of its message! Whatever you say about the Bible, start there. What does the Bible say about itself. Today, before we go, what did Jesus say about the Bible? Because I want to know what Jesus said. And what Jesus said is that «I have not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets (the Old Testament) but to fulfill it».

What Jesus said is that «Not one word of God’s Word will be broken, that it is pure, that it is whole». We’ll talk about the unification of the Bible and how it has one unique, unifying theme throughout it, and that unique, unifying theme of the Bible is Jesus Himself. Jesus said, «You search the Scriptures (in John chapter 5, verse 39) because they testify of Me». This is the story of salvation. It is the testimony of Jesus Christ from the Revelation or pardon me, from the book of Genesis, from Creation to the Revelation and everything through and through, it is in preparation, announcement of the coming of Christ and the one who’s coming again, Jesus our Lord. It’s all about Him!

Can I just give you in closing a personal testimony about the Bible, my Bible? I’ve had many of them through the years, but my first one was given to me by my family. Specifically, my grandfather. I’m grateful for parents who believed the Bible and a grandfather who read the Scriptures to me. Some of you have heard of me speak of this before, and again, I’m grateful for Sunday school teachers as a little boy. I feel like Timothy when Paul spoke of Timothy and said, «You’ve known the Holy Scriptures since your youth because of your mother Lois and your grandmother».

And as a little boy I reveled in the stories of the Bible, the adventures of the Bible. My grandfather would read to me a book called Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible. It had pictures. I loved the pictures. Before I learned to read, the Bible was read to me! I learned to read hearing the Bible read, really. Not with Spot and Jane and whoever Jane was with. Who was Jane? Oh, thank you. Mine was more Peter and Paul and Mary, these were the characters that I grew up reading and reading about! And so, it’s so important parents and grandparents, that you read the Scriptures to your children, and that you help your children understand the Bible. But I’m saying, I’m so grateful that the Bible has been such an integral part of my life, and I’ve spent these years learning more and more about the Bible.

And when I was in London this summer at Oxford University with Dr. Johnston and our two sons, Jason and Josh, we were taken back to see the manuscript, one of the first manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew, just pieces, just fragments. Probably end of second century. We’ll talk about the manuscript evidence of the Bible and for the Bible next week, but I held in my hand once again pieces of the Bible so old, 2000 years plus. And I looked at that and I realized now as a man with ever increasing birthdays, I thought about when I first held a Bible as a little boy, I truly did; thought about the first time I held my little New Testament given to me by my grandfather.

Now I’m looking at this ancient fragment of manuscript and I realize that I believe the Bible now after all these years more than ever! With all the doubts and experiences that come in life and stuff that happens in life, I’ve leaned on the Lord and His Word throughout my days. And I’m standing here as a testimony to you that you can believe the Bible all your life. You don’t have to say, «Well, that’s a storybook for children». NO! It’s God’s Book for you! It’s the transforming power of the Scripture.

And there’s convicting power, because when God’s word is preached, we’re convicted of our sin and our need of a Savior and salvation; it’s converting power, «Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.»; it is counseling power because Psalm 119, verse 105, I hung it in my room as a youth, «Your word is a light to my path and a lamp to my feet», so we have counsel in God’s Word. We have comfort in God’s Word, there’s comforting power in God’s Word. How many times have we opened the Scripture to someone with a broken heart and shared God’s Word and seen God bring comfort through the Scriptures to people’s lives. There’s cleansing power in the Word of God, «Jesus said, 'Sanctify them with Your truth, Your word is truth, O God».

«How shall a young man cleanse his ways? By giving attention to Your Word, O God». Yes, there’s convicting power and converting power and counseling power and comforting power and conquering power! Taking the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. We can defeat every enemy, subdue every stronghold in our lives by the power and the authority of the Word of God! Know it! Love it! Believe it! Live it! Lean on it! Because the Bible through Jesus Christ our Lord will transform your life.