Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The Power of Scripture: excerpts from John MacArthur

Psa 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple....

We must have childlike faith, not skeptic's unbelief. Logic cannot explain any miracle, much less the Death of the Sinless Lord and His resurrection! Man's mind is as fallen and deceitful as his wicked heart.

Excerpts from John MacArthur on why we believe the Bible--and he touches on various reasons, but this struck a chord with me:

Why We Believe The Bible :

That's why when you're trying to deal with a non-believer you can stack up and stack up and stack up all kinds of evidences, all kinds of reasonable arguments. And believe me, the truth is rational. And the truth is reasonable. But that doesn't take people there. If you want to present the case for biblical authenticity and I want to do that every single time I step in this pulpit, I do not get up here and tell you what are the reasonable evidences that the Bible is true, I just open it up for it is sharper, more powerful than any other weapon. It carries its own power with it.

You either believe that a human being has a rational power on his own to ascend to the truth of God's Word or you believe he doesn't. If you believe he does, you have an unbiblical view of man. If you believe he doesn't, then you know that the power is not in evidences to the rational mind, but the power is in the proclamation of the Word of God. And what you have in ministry today that is nothing but trying to convince people with cleverness and reasonableness and whatever other manipulating forces that somehow within the heart of man is the capability for him to rise out of his spiritual death, rise out of his spiritual blindness, rise out of divine judicial blindness and on his own believe because you've made it so easy for him. Ludicrous...but it's what drives so much of so-called evangelism. The sinner's opposition to the Word of God, the sinner's opposition to divine holy truth, the sinner's opposition to the gospel does not arise from legitimate intellectual issues regarding the truth or the veracity of Scripture. It rises from the rebellion of a sinful soul and because he is natural and even at his best rational level, he cannot attain to this spiritual knowledge. Man is not the final court of appeal. You cannot let the sinner think that his reason is the deciding factor in his salvation. According to God, God is the final court of appeal. His revelation decides what's true, not man's reason. Sinners have for centuries applied their reason to the Bible and come up with all kinds of damning heresies. "And all men...writes Van Til...do their thinking on the basis of a position accepted by faith and your faith is either in God...he says...or in yourself and your reason. I will not put my faith in human reason, so I do not preach things that manipulate human reason. I preach the Word of God because my faith is in His power and His Word. Thus to know divine truth and to understand the Bible, the sinner must call on God. The sinner must be overwhelmed with the truth of the Word of God. Preach anything other than the Scripture and you are wasting your time. The sinner must understand the truth. He must have that information. He must have that interpretation. We are begotten again by the Word of Truth, but he must cry out for God to save him, to give him life, to take off the blinders, to overpower the enemy who has blinded him, to remove the things that God Himself has hidden from him and bring them into the light. The sinner has to throw himself before the throne of God and cry out with the depths of his fearful soul, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Give me an understanding of the truth." It's all the work of God.

End quote.

And this is what I've been trying to say for so long. As a pastor friend said a few years ago, most professing Christians don't think the MIND FELL along with everything else at The Fall of Adam. That's why they appeal to the the intellect, which is a grave error, since the mind is just as consumed with sin as the heart and soul.

"The Bible Is God's Word" by MacArthur:

The New Testament agrees with the Old, calling God a God of truth. John 3:33 says, "God is truthful." John 17:3, Jesus said, "That they may know You, the only true God." 1 John 5:20, "He is the true God." Three times the Scripture says God cannot lie...Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2; and Hebrews 6:18. God cannot lie. It is impossible. The Bible is therefore infallible and inerrant because it is written by God who is truth, speaks only truth, cannot speak anything but truth.

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