Sermon
The Incorruptible Word of God
October 16, 2005
Pastor Donald Sheley

I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles as well as your notes today, and for you that join with us, I'm delighted that you're here. We started in the fall season a verse-by-verse exposition of 1 Peter. We've only got to verse 23 of chapter 1, and we're going to continue in our verse-by-verse analysis of this tremendous letter given to us by Peter.

He writes: "Having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you."

In our text from Peter today, he reaches back seven hundred years to the writings of Isaiah in chapter 40 and he picks up these words: "The voice said, "Cry out!" And he said, "What shall I cry?" "All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades. Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever."

Now prior to this particular verse we find in that ancient text these words: "Behold, the Lord God shall come with a strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him; behold, His reward is with Him. And His work before Him. He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those who are with young."

And of course here we have one of the great Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus Christ who is the Great Shepherd. And John in chapter 10 records these words: "Then Jesus said to them again, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever come before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The shepherd gives His life for the sheep.'"

Now Peter has just told us in the text before our reading today that we have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot, and now he adds: "Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever."

When Jesus was discussing the new birth with Nicodemus, He said: "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."

Now if we were to check a number of theological manuscripts, many of the theologians would say that what Jesus is referencing when He's talking about water and the Spirit, that He's talking about the matter of baptism being a part of the new birth; baptism plus the work of the Holy Spirit. That's the teaching of some, but the Bible seems to indicate differently.

Ephesians chapter 5 verse 26, look at what Paul writes: "that He might sanctify and cleanse her (speaking of the Church, that's you and me) with the washing of water by the word." Jesus prayed in John 17:7: "Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth." And earlier in John's gospel, Jesus said: "You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken unto you."

So it seems to be that what Jesus is saying, that we are saved, we come to Christ through the power of the word in the work of the Holy Spirit. And believers have a common ground in Christ. We have all been born again, we are sinners saved by grace, and because we have all received new life in Christ, we should be motivated to live for Him to please God, to obey the truth, and to keep ourselves pure, and to love our Christian brothers and sisters. And that's Peter's point in the letter. He is saying that because this marvelous experience has come to us in God giving us His life and we are born again, it should change our relationship not only with God, but also with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now the change that takes place in our lives, called the new birth, is an eternal work of God. Our new birth was not of perishable seed, Peter says, meaning of human origin, so that we one day wither and die; rather our new birth originated from the imperishable seed described as the living and enduring word of God.

Now that's an interesting word and when you trace it through the Scriptures let me show you how it's used by John. Just take your Bible and hold it and move towards the Book of Revelation and there is a book called 1 John, it's chapter 3 and verse 9. Let's see how John talks about this seed, this imperishable seed. John says: "Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God." Now in the King James text that's difficult for us to understand. Is he saying that because now were Christians we don't sin? No, he's not saying.

We go to the Amplified Text and this is the way we would read it in the original: "No one born [begotten] of God [deliberately, knowingly, and habitually] practices sin, for God's nature abides in him [His principle of life, the divine sperm, remains permanently within him]; and he cannot practice sinning because he is born [begotten] of God."

Now here's what John is saying, when this marvelous spiritual transaction takes place and that imperishable seed takes life within us, which is the very life of God, we cannot comfortably sin. That's not that we won't sin, but when we do sin we become extremely uncomfortable, we'll be sensitive, we'll feel the guilt of that sin, and immediately we seek God's forgiveness.

John's point is this: that new life within us gives us a sensitivity to sin that we just can't go on habitually sinning and call ourselves a child of God. And thus, if you find sinning easy and comfortable, the Scriptures would indicate that you don't have the life of God within you, because the life of God within us makes us sensitive to wrong and to the sin around us, and we respond seeking God's forgiveness when we fail.

Now we seem to find that indicated in other verses. Look in the middle of page 2: "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." That's the spiritual birth.

James writes for us: "Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." And here again, the power of the word active within our lives.

The Hebrews passage says: "For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are. Nothing in all creation can hide from Him. This is the God to whom we must explain all that we have done." So God's word lives and endures forever, because God who gave it lives and endures from eternity past to eternity future.

Down at the bottom of the page Paul writes this in Romans: "For I am not ashamed of the Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes-Jews first and also Gentiles. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in His sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, 'It is through faith that a righteous person has life.'"

And our text, of course, Peter has said that we have been born again by this incorruptible seed, which is the Word of the Lord.

Now turn with me to page 3, but just set your notes aside for a minute and let me talk to you about this book we hold, which is the Word of the Lord. Would you just hold your Bible there in your hand, because I think that many of us do not realize what a precious gift God has given to us in His Word. This book containing 66 books was compiled over a period of 1500 years. It was compiled and written by 40 different authors on three different continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, in three different languages.

Now the Old Testament primarily is in Hebrew, but when we get into the text there are portions in Ezra and I think in Nehemiah that were written in Aramaic, so there is a small fraction of the language of Aramaic in the Old Testament. Most of it is Hebrew. In the New Testament, it's Greek. And so we have a book 1500 years in compilation, 40 different authors, on three different continents, and three different languages.

Now during its writing it was written by a variety of men with various occupations, some were kings, fishermen, tax collectors, shepherds, prophets, and even a physician added his part to the Scripture and of course that would be Luke the physician. We have it written on various locations. Moses was highly educated; Peter was a fisherman. They wrote at different periods of history, but we have in our hands today the writings of these men of God touched by the Holy Spirit.

It's interesting if we pick up this book, and we had time, we could go through and we would count about 1500 different times where God tells us this word comes from Him; it has divine origin, over 1500 times. Now it's a book to be prized, it's a book to be loved.

In our notes I want you to turn with me to page 5. You can read the notes as you have lunch today, but there are some things that I just really...that are on my heart to share with you. If this book was compiled over a period of 1500 years and Isaiah wrote his text 700 years before Christ, the question is on what kind of material were the original manuscripts written on? In your notes in the middle of page 5 I write: Among the writing materials available in biblical times, the most common was papyrus, which was made from the papyrus plant. This reed grew in the shallow lakes and the rivers of Egypt and Syria. And large shipments of papyrus were sent through the Syrian port of Byblos. And it is surmised that the Greek word for books (biblos) comes from the name of this port.

Now the Cambridge History of the Bible gives us an account as to how papyrus was prepared for writing. "The reeds were stripped and cut lengthwise into thin narrow slices before being beaten and pressed together into two layers set at right angles to each other. When dried the whitish surface was polished smooth with a stone or other implement. Pliny, a historian, refers to several qualities of this papyrus, and varying thickness and surfaces are found before the New Kingdom period when sheets were often very thin and even translucent."

And so we have some of the oldest papyrus fragments date back 2400 years before Christ. The earliest manuscripts were written on papyrus, and it was difficult for any to survive except in dry areas such as the sands of Egypt or in caves such as the Qumran caves, where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered. Now other materials were used in early writing such as parchment and vellum.

Parchment was prepared skins of sheep, or goats, or antelope, or other animals. And vellum was the name given to calf skin and often dyed purple. And the oldest leather scrolls date back 1500 years before Christ. And the instruments used in ancient writing were the chisel, and the metal stylus, or a pen which was fashioned from some of the rushes or weeds from the rivers.

The ink in the ancient world was usually a compound of charcoal, gum and water.
And rolls or scrolls were made by gluing sheets of papyrus together and then winding the resulting long strips around a stick.

Now let's go to page 6. Now we know what the writing material was, and it did have the capacity to have longevity. But here is the question, as to the text of our Bible, the question might be asked, "Since we do not have the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts and the time interval between the original and the extant, or the currently existing copies? In other words, when we want to study the Scriptures and its historical accuracy, the question we want to ask is how much supporting evidence, how many manuscripts are available to support the...we don't have the original document, and yet we have copies of the original document. How many do we have and what is the timeframe between the event and the composition of the text, because the shorter the interval the more precise the history will be.

So let's read on - On the basis of manuscript tradition alone, the works that make up the New Testament were the most frequently copied and widely circulated books of antiquity. As a result, the fidelity of the New Testament text rests upon a multitude of manuscript evidence. If we count all of the Greek text or the copies alone of the New Testament that are preserved, there are 5,656 partial or complete manuscript portions that were either copied by hand from the second through the fifteenth centuries.

Pause - if you ever have the opportunity to journey to London set aside a whole week just to spend it in the Museum of London, because they possibly have the largest accumulated mass of manuscripts. You could spend days going from room to room and under these thick glass protection you'll find these ancient manuscripts. It's an amazing and it's a thrilling experience to see how much supporting evidence we have for our Bible. Let's read on.

Now there are now more than 5,686 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. You add over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other early versions, and we have close to, if not more than, 25,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today. Now that's amazing, isn't it? Twenty-five thousand existing manuscripts, copies from the original text. Let's read on.

The importance of the sheer number of manuscript copies cannot be overstated. As with other documents of ancient literature, there are no known extant (currently existing) original manuscripts of the Bible. However, the abundance of manuscript copies makes it possible to reconstruct the original with virtually complete accuracy.

Let me explain. If we had the space and we laid out all 25,000 of these manuscripts and then we would start with the very first word of Matthew and see how many of those manuscripts have that exact word; what's the word in the first line of Matthew, and it would be amazing that when you take and run the gamut of those 25,000 manuscripts you'll have almost massive evidence they all start with the same word.

Now you work your way through the entire New Testament, and you can understand with that much supporting evidence, when you finish, you have an accurate rendering of the original text. Now let's read on. Dropping down.

Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, who was the director and principal librarian of the British Museum and second in none to the authority on the issuing of statements, and that's why I say London and the museum there has such a massive display of manuscripts. He writes that: ...besides the number of the manuscripts of the New Testament differ from those of the classical authors. In no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest extant manuscripts so short as in that in the New Testament.

In other words, you can read in the front of your Bible when Paul writes something he says he wrote this in Rome in A.D. 67. Now, that compilation we have, and what you have is in the early years of the church you have the writings of Paul and of course there were a number of other writings, but over a period of time those writings came together, and when you get to the year of 367 A.D. a man by the name of Athanasius, who wrote the Athanasian Creed, one of the most precise creeds probably of our Christian faith, he was the first one to have a compilation which he presented which was the canon of Scriptures as we know it in the New Testament.

In the year of 390 A.D. there was a council that was held called the Council of Hippo, I think it was called, and there they accepted not only the Old Testament canon, but the New Testament canon as well as the Scriptures as we now have them today. Now it's interesting, when the Old Testament was written in its Hebrew, Hebrew was a very limited language and only one people spoke Hebrew and thus the preciseness of the Old Testament because of the scribes and the rabbis, and because it wasn't a world language, the accuracy of the Old Testament was never questioned. In fact, when you get to 200 years before Christ the whole canon of the Old Testament was complete, and so when we come to the New Testament we have these various writings by the apostle and others, and then there's that time of compilation, and then we have in our hands today the text.

Now let's read on. Down at the bottom of the page - Although there are certainly differences in many of the New Testament manuscripts, now remember, they were handwritten and copying word for...some of them were written actually letter by letter, and as a result there were times of human error. Let me read on. But not one fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests upon a disputed reading.

Now what we have in all of those manuscripts, we have these variations and they are called variants, and sometimes there is the misspelling of a word or the misplacement of a word or maybe a scribe left out a passage and he'll write it out in the margins. But in all of those variants of the Scriptures, never do they once affect our Christian faith or the doctrine we believe as Christians.

Now let's read on - now concerning the reliability of the Old Testament, it has been shown to be reliable in at least three major ways; textual transmission, that is the accuracy of the copying process down through history. And again I explained that, because of the preciseness of Hebrew and the limited people involved they kept a more accurate precision in their transmission. Secondly, that the confirmation of the Old Testament by hard evidence uncovered through archaeology, and then the documentary evidence also uncovered through archaeology.

Now as with other literature of antiquity, we do not have the original documents, but the accuracy of the Hebrew copyists is astonishing when comparing the Scriptures to other literature of antiquity. For example, even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in the Qumran Cave near the Dead Sea in 1947, they were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known. In other words, before 1947 the earliest dating we had for manuscripts was 980 A.D. Now we find those scrolls and they march us back 1000 years in history, and look at what they find; they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. That is absolutely amazing.

Isaiah written 700 years before Christ, we find the scrolls in 1947, 95% of the text is exactly as we have it in the Hebrew Bible today. Let's read on. The 5 percent of variation, that's the variant, consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling. They do not affect the message of revelation in the slightest. And that's that 5% human error possibility.

Now Professor Wilson, and he has done an awful lot of writing with regards to the Scriptures, he writes that the accuracy of the Old Testament...he states that there are about forty kings mentioned in the Old Testament living from the time of 2000 B.C. to 400 B.C., so now we've got 1600 years of history from 2000 years before Christ to 400 years before Christ. Now in our Bible we have those kings listed, 40 of them, chronological and in the nation they served. Through archaeological findings the chronological setting is the same as the Bible. But look at what he says: Each appears in chronological order with reference to the kings of the same country and with respect to the kings of other countries. No stronger evidence for the substantial accuracy of the Old Testament records could possibly be imagined, than this collection of kings. In other words, he says that very preciseness of 1600 years of kingships.

Now look at what he puts, he puts down in the bottom a footnote in his writings, he says that in a footnote Professor Wilson computes the probability of this accuracy occurring by chance. Mathematically, it is one chance in 750,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000. Which simply says, for that to be simply by chance the work of man - there's no possibility.

Now here is what I've tried to show you. This precious book that we have here we don't ever have to question its accuracy. God has preserved it for us. That's the marvel of preservation. Can you imagine all the years of preservation and we have such a precise and accurate text today of which we can study. And when we think of what it has cost us to bring this Bible into our hands today, I mean you go back 500 years ago and I mean men were dying being burned at the stake because they wanted the common people to have a Bible so they could read it, and they gave their lives so that you and I today might have the living Word of God. And isn't it sad that we treat it with such rejection or with neglect. The greatest gift, God's word to us, proven to be accurate, proven to be true; the grass will wither, the flowers will fade, but the Word of God stands forever.

And here's what Peter says, this word is alive. It will transform our lives if we read it. If we put the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the Scripture into actual...It will absolutely transform us. What a precious book we have.

On the last page of our notes I conclude our lesson by suggesting that the Bible is God's final revelation to man. Such a mode of divine revelation ceased with the Book of Revelation. God has given no new or further revelation since John penned the last part of the Scriptures. His complete will for man and for the ages are unfolded therein, and if one appears with the claim that he has received a new revelation, he can be classed as an imposter.

There's a beautiful chapter in our Bible. It's I think 176 verses long. It's Psalm 119, and it's all about the Bible. Let me just pull a few verses from that particular chapter. "Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens." I'm reading in the middle of page 8. "Your faithfulness continues through all generations; You established the earth, and it endures."

And again, "How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to Your word. I seek You with all my heart; do not let me stray from Your commands. I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You." "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey Your word. It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn Your decrees. The law from Your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold."

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart." David is telling of his love for God's Word.

Now I know that there are people that the Bible does not in any way seem to move them. They have little admiration for the book we cherish. But Paul tells us why that's so. Paul writes, the natural man, that's the sinner man, does not understand the things of the Spirit because they are spiritually understood, and thus the man who has not that living seed, the life of God within him through faith in Christ, the Bible is just another book. But when that seed, that imperishable seed, the very life of God is implanted within us through faith in Christ, there's a love for God's Word.

It's so thrilling to me to watch a new convert. Now that the life of God is in them, the Bible, and sometimes it looks like they wear a Bible out in a week's time because all of a sudden what was ink and paper now becomes the very breath of God because that's what the Bible says - This is the breath of God - and once you see it and once you feel its strength and you feel it within your own heart and life you understand why the Word of God is quick and it's alive and it's powerful, and it pierces to the very core of our being in our life.

We hold in our hands the precious gift from Almighty God, and my prayer is this week when you pick up your Bible, take time to say, God, I want to thank you for my Bible and I want to thank you for leaving me the direction for life, and giving me light on my pathway and food for my soul, because that's exactly what this book is. It's not just another book. It's the living Word of God that lives and abides forever.

Now there's one area that I haven't talked about that I'm going to take just a moment. It's the problem of translating the original text into the language of our day. We go back 2000 years ago they spoke differently than we speak. They used words differently. And not only do you have the problem of moving the meaning of those words into the present day vocabulary, but you also have the problem that in many languages there is no way to say certain things. One of the great challenges of Whitecliff Bible translators is going into these tribes and trying to find something that takes place within the life of those people that they can use to bring out a truth of God's Word, and that becomes part of the translation of Scripture. It's a situation or a happening or a way of their culture that makes them to understand what the Bible is saying.

And so what we will find, there are two kinds of the translations. There is what is called the textual translation. It's text, word for word, and then there is what is called dynamic translation, and that is where the scholar seeks to take those original words and as best he can with the knowledge that he has of the original languages to move that thought, that word into the language of our day. And that's where the criticisms arise because in those translations the scholars will have just a different shade of meaning or think to a word and you'll find the variations in our translations. And yet you have these hundreds and hundreds of versions of the Scriptures down through time, but there will be variations in the transmission. Words do change.

You know my boys came home to me a few years ago and they said, Dad, that is boss. That's strange. Boss was the guy who signed my check. But now they've taken a word and they've added a new definition to it, and what they were simply saying, Dad, that's right on, man, that's right on. All right, so now it's boss.

I picked up the phone the other day and called Texas for a reason and the guy on the other end of the phone said man that's cool, that's cool, that's cool man. I'm not close enough to put any cold water on you. The difference between cold to me is hot, I mean, and yet you know and I know that in our current language they've taken a word, transferred it, and they've added a new definition to it. And so we have a constant changing of vocabulary and words, and the great challenge is to go back and transmit those truths as closely as we can in our understanding in the present day vocabulary.

Now I say that ladies and gentlemen because there are foolish people abroad who take one particular version, 1611, King James, and simply say that is the only version of Scripture that God inspired. That's so wrong, because you can pick out from any hundreds of translations and say that's the word of God. And they'll even go so far as to say if the original language doesn't agree with our translation, throw out the original language. And that's why I say it's very important that we understand God has marvelously preserved this word for us, and there are a multitude of variations, a multitude of writings. It's the Spirit of God who speaks to us that what this Bible says is true. It's given to us by God. It's alive; it's living. It will change your life if you let it. Amen?

Let's pray. Father, we love Your word, and when we consider the miracle of its preservation and the preciseness and the accuracy of the transmission of the text, and the tremendous amount of manuscript evidence that supports the accuracy of our Bible, we are made to awe and say thank you dear God for our Scriptures.

Would you forgive us, dear God, for neglecting our Bible? Some of us sitting here have allowed this entire week to go by and we allowed our Bible to sit idle without any attention from us, and yet, Your word is Your very breath; It's alive, it will feed our souls yet we're so guilty of neglecting it. Please forgive us dear God, and I pray that You'll plant within the heart of every person sitting here today an intense love and a hunger for Your word; to know it, to love it, to live it every day of our life. Thank you dear God for our Bible, in Jesus' name. Amen? God bless you.