Could He? Would He? Did He?
Psalms 12:6-7 (KJV)
The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
My goal for tonight’s message is a daunting one.
I need to endeavor to tell you why we use only the King James Bible.
And more so, why it is the only one that anyone Christian should use.
· We believe that it has no mistakes
· We believe it needs no corrections
· We believe it cannot be improved upon
That’s a pretty bold position and, honestly, not very popular.
· Not everyone who uses the King James Version believes that it is without error.
· But everyone who uses a different version believes that their Bible does have errors.[1]
People with much more formal education than I have argue and debate these things all the time.
When the debate comes up among Independent Baptists someone will usually say this, “You aren’t going to convince me and I am not going to convince you. Let’s just agree to disagree and move on.”
· Linguists
· Bible Scholars and
· Preachers
have been debating this issue for just about 200 years.
I have no illusions of being able to convince you in 35-40 minutes.
But I don’t think the debate can be won the way most go about it anyway.
· I don’t think the facts about the different Bibles will really convince anyone.
· I don’t think the differences between the manuscripts used to translate the Bible will impress anyone
· I don’t think criticizing Westcott and Hort, the original attackers of the King James Bible will change anyone’s mind
Let me just say:
From 1611 to about 1876, the King James Bible is the undisputed, authorized Bible of the English speaking world.
In late 1800’s two scholars, Westcott and Hort, produced a Greek version of the Bible based on a family of ancient texts the King James Translators rejected[2] and immediately attacked the King James Bible as having errors because it did not have the benefit of their own Greek text to work from.
Every version of the Bible besides the King James, is based upon the work of Westcott and Hort. [3]
The Textus Receptus, upon which the King James is based, comes from 1000’s of ancient manuscripts. The Westcott and Hort/Nestle text is based on primarily just three ancient texts, their argument being that they are better because they are older.
Every other version of the Bible rests on the philosophy that the Bible has been corrupted by time and people and that we depend on modern scholarship to make it as close to what God meant to say as possible.
What I want to do tonight is to appeal to the character of God as the only necessary argument for the preservation of the infallible Word of God.
· I know the Bible is true. further.
· I know that the Bible I am preaching from today is completely true and has no error.
I want to address a doctrine called the preservation of Scripture.
I want to approach the subject with three questions:
· Could God preserve His Words without error if He chose to do so?
· Would God have a reason to preserve His words to man without error? And finally
· Did God preserve His Word for us?
I. COULD GOD?
Job 42:1-2 KJV
Then Job answered the LORD, and said,
I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.
Many years ago, while I was the Executive Vice President of Heartland Baptist Bible College, I prepared a message out of this passage. One of my best friends was Jamie Jett.
· He served as our Dean of Men at the time but
· He had also been a pastor for many years.
As I was preparing that message, Brother Jett came into my office and I began to talk to him about the text. I commented that one of my first observations when beginning to study the passage was that it says God can do everything, not God can to anything. And we began talking about the difference Brother Jett illustrated the difference by saying, “There is a huge difference between saying
· “Honey, I am going to the store. Do you want anything? versus,
· “Honey, I am going to the store. Do you want everything?”
Job knew that God could do everything.
· He could speak and create the heavens and the earth
· He could will it and Flood the whole planet
· He could command it and the Red Sea would part
· He could choose it and the earth would open up
· He could promise and an enemy would be destroyed
· He could make the moon stand still
· He could make the sun turn backward
· He could raise a boy back to life
· He could stop the heart of a wicked enemy of David
In the New Testament
· He could become man through the virgin, Mary
· He could turn water into wine
· He could heal servants, little girls and sick widows
· He could cast demons out of those living among the tombs
· He could raise Jairus’ daughter, the boy at Nain and Lazarus fro the dead
· He could walk on water
· He could calm the storms of the sea
· He could feed thousands with just a few pieces of bread and fish
In fact, it would be much easier to answer
· What can’t God do? than it would be to answer
· What can God do?
“I know” Job said to God, “Thou canst do everything…”
So I may ask the question:
Could God preserve the Bible word for word accurate and without error today?
A. If you were to read the positions of the prominent Bible publishers, you would think not.
Each new version of the Bible claims to be an improvement upon the version previous to it and since you can't improve on perfection the obvious conclusion is they do not believe the Bible versions before theirs were perfect. (Nor do they claim perfection for their own.)
B. If you were to hear the sermons of the famous television and radio evangelists of our day, you would think not
Every one of them reads from a different version of the Bible. Very often they make statements to the effect of, “A better translation would be…” Every time they do that they imply that they are better linguists than those who originally translated the Bible into our language.
The fact is, almost no preacher in America today is a linguist at all – they are all merely aping the words of someone they read – who probably was no linguist himself.
C. If you are not careful, the very notes and hints that you find in your Bible would lead you to believe God could not preserve His Word
Phrases such as, “Older and more reliable manuscripts omit this verse.” Abound in the footnotes of many of the Bibles we can purchase these days.
But we still face the question; “Could God preserve His Bible perfect and without mistakes today?”
I am no linguist, but I am
· A child of God
· A preacher of righteousness and
· A follower of Jesus Christ
And I insist to you, if God is God at all He can.
· If He can call into existence the heavens and the earth, He can preserve His word without mistakes
· If He can part the Red Sea, He can preserve His Word without mistakes
· If He can dwell among us as Jesus did, He can preserve His Word without mistakes
Could God preserve His Word without mistakes?
The answer is a resounding, of course He could.
II. WOULD GOD?
Would it be the will of God to preserve His Bible perfect and without mistakes today?
God can do anything He wills to do. The question then is, Did God want to preserve His Word perfectly?
The Bible makes it very clear that God had no intention to allow man to mess up His Bible. He gave it to us as His communication to man how to be forgiven of our sin and given a home in heaven.
The message is just too important to let it be corrupted by the errors of man.
A. Let’s look at some Bible:
Psalms 12:6-7 KJV
The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
To be fair, I should point out that those who do not believe God has preserved His Word perfectly do not believe this verse is a promise to preserve His Word the Bible. They see it as meaning that God will keep His promise to protect His people from their enemies. In other words, God promises to protect his people and God here promises his promise is pure.
I don’t have a problem with that interpretation. I only have a problem with limiting it to one generation and one people.
The Bible as a whole is a promise to protect His people from their enemies:
· The world
· The flesh and
· The Devil
The Bible as a whole is a promise to:
· Bring lost souls to an awareness of their sin
· Point those same souls to Jesus, the One who will take away their sin and
· Rescue those who come to Christ from their sin and its punishment in eternal hell
Psalms 12:6-7 is God’s promise that His promise is pure and will remain pure forever.
By the way, notice the passage promises to preserve His “words” and not just His Word. The modernist argues that while all versions of the Bible today have some mistakes, the gist of the Word is still trustworthy and accurate.
· They would say that we can trust God’s Word
· Even if we can’t trust His words
I am telling you that you can trust every Word of the Bible, even if you don’t yet understand why God has preserved a particular Word in the Bible.
B. This isn’t the only passage that expresses God’s willingness to preserve His Words
Matthew 5:17-18 KJV
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Notice a few things here.
Jesus said He did not come to destroy it but to fulfill it. The will of Jesus is to fulfill the Word of God, not to see it destroyed or compromised in any way.
Would God preserve His Word without mistakes? The answer again is a resounding, of course He would.
III. DID GOD?
Since God can and God would preserve His Bible perfect and without mistakes, it is only right to ask the question, "Did he do it?"
This question, in my opinion, is the pivot point between
· Those who believe, as I do, that we have a preserved Bible and
· Those who believe, as the majority of modern “scholars”, that there are mistakes in the Bible we have today.
No believer to my knowledge argues that God’s Word was imperfect in its original form.
Nor do they argue that God could have kept it perfect had He chosen to do so.
I would like for you to see that the earliest Christians believed that God had preserved His Words without error.
A. Paul believed that God had preserved His Words perfectly
2 Timothy 3:15-17 KJV
And 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.
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 perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
Notice that he says “all scripture”
· Not just parts of it
· Not just the gist of it
· Not major message of it
He said that all scripture is given by inspiration and that it is all profitable. If it is all profitable, it must all be infallible and without mistakes.
B. Peter believed that God had preserved His Words perfectly
1 Peter 1:23-25 KJV
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:
But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
Two phrases give us Peter’s understanding of the preservation of the Bible:
The word corruption is used in Peter’s Pentecostal message to contrast the dead bodies of David and Jesus
· David’s body stayed dead and corrupted
· Jesus’ body resurrected and did not corrupt
That is how we ought to view the Bible.
· It is alive
· It is vital and
· It has never been corrupted
That is not to say it has never been attacked. There are any number of versions of the Bible that are corrupted. But God has seen to it that there has also always been a Bible that is without corruption.
Conclusion
One of the silliest things I think Satan ever introduced into the world is the idea that:
· God spoke to people His living Word
· God led them to record that living Word in written form but then
· God allowed mistakes to be introduced into His Word
so that we cannot be sure what we have today is the perfect Word of God.
If I have no assurance that God preserved His Words perfectly then I have no real way to know what His Word for me may be and what might be the result of human or Satanic corruption. And, don’t you see, that removes all authority from the Bible. It gives me the right to pick and choose which parts I like and want to obey and which parts I do not
I am convinced that:
· God could preserve His Word without mistakes
· God would want to preserve His Word without mistakes and
· God did preserve His Word without mistakes
in the King James Version of the Bible.
[1] I understand that they may not have ever really thought about it. But I promise that those who made the version did think about it. They engaged in translating the Bible because they do not believe it is possible for the Bible to ever be 100% accurate and true.
[2] Or at least chose not to lean on.
[3] Every other version of the Bible is fundamentally different than the King James Bible because they are built from fundamentally different materials.
