2. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 We Believe God Has Spoken in His Word We have two major categories of revelation: 1.General Revelation in Psalm 19:1-6 2.Special Revelation in Psalm 19:7-11 3.The Proper Response in Psalm 19:12-14 Today we focus on the Word of God—Scripture.

3. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 The Word of God Written over 1,500 years About 40 human authors Three Languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek 66 Books: 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament 1,189 Chapters: 929 in OT, 260 in NT added around 1200 A.D. About 31,000 Verses: just over 23,000 in OT; about 7,950 in NT added around 1500 A.D.

4. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 The Word of God The Bible is the best selling book of all time and the best selling book every year. 50 Bibles sold every minute 72,000 every day 26 million Bibles sold every year Estimated 6 billion copies in existence The best selling single volume: A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 200 million; The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien 150 million. Source: David Jeremiah

5. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 Psalm 19 C. S. Lewis called it “the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “He is wisest who reads both the world-book and the Word-book as two volumes of the same work, and feels concerning them, ‘My Father wrote them both.’ ”

6. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31

7. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 The Bible Claims to be the Word of God The Old Testament uses the phrase “thus says the Lord” over 3,500 times.

8. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 The Bible Claims to be the Word of God 2 Tim 3:16-17, “ 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

9. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 The Bible Claims to be the Word of God 2 Peter 1:19-21, “ 19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

10. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 The Bible Claims to be the Word of God 2 Peter 3:15-16, “ 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. ”

11. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 Jesus Says the Bible is the Word of God Matt 15:4, “ 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’” citing the ten commandments. Matt 22:43, “ 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,” citing Psalm 110:1. Mark 12:26-27, “ 26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”

12. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 Jesus Says the Bible is the Word of God Matt 26:52-54, “ 52 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 53 Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” Luke 24:44, 44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

13. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 “This Book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this Book.” John Bunyan

14. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 Application verses 12-14 1.Humility: we can’t event discern our hidden faults. (v. 12) 2.Presumptuous sins when committed have dominion and enslave us. We must resist them. (v. 13) 3.Do our words, thoughts and meditations please God? (v. 14)

15. W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 W E B ELIEVE John 20:31 Final Thought Do you spend more time reading Facebook than God’s Book? “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” Isaiah 40:8