Breathing in what God's BREATHED

One of the greatest chapters in the Bible about the process of inspiration, as well as one of the most overlooked, is Jeremiah 36.

God instructs Jeremiah in verse 2: “Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day.”

“Jerry is having a problem; he’s not getting a very good reception and God says, ‘Go get you a book, roll it out, and write down all the words,’ ” explains Jordan. “That term ‘word’ occurs 17 times in the chapter. What he’s writing down here is not just a bunch of thoughts; it’s some w-o-r-d-s.

“Where did Jerry get the words from? God spoke them to him. Scripture is given by God speaking some w-o-r-d-s. So Jeremiah starts writing them down.

“Verse 4 says, ‘Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah: and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the LORD, which he had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book.’

“Notice the Words of God came from the mouth of Jeremiah and Baruch writes them down. Did you know Jeremiah didn’t write the book that’s got his name on it? Who wrote the book? Baruch was the scribe.

“Did you ever read in Romans 16:22 where he says Tertius wrote this book? It says, ‘I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.’ You say, ‘I thought Paul wrote it?’ Well, God through Jeremiah spoke the words; it’s given by inspiration and then it’s written down by Baruch.

“The words are the issue; not the process. The words put on the page are the issue. How they got there is inspiration. God spoke them and they wrote them down. Now they are recorded.

“Theologians get so bound up with, ‘How did the words get there and was it mechanical?’ They got there pretty simple. Read Jeremiah 36. God spoke them and the dude wrote them down.

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“Inspiration has to do with God’s breath. He speaks and then they’re written down; they’re given by inspiration. Jeremiah 36:11 says, ‘When Michaiah the son of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, had heard out of the book all the words of the LORD.’  

“God’s very breath is what’s in the words; can you get the idea why the Word of God is powerful? It’s the physical, tangible form in which you get that spiritual reality that is God’s Word.

“That’s why Jesus said in John 6:63, ‘The words I speak unto you are spirit and life.’

Jeremiah 36:18 says, ‘Then Baruch answered them, He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book.’

“Any questions?! That’s pretty easy. One of the most fascinating things is what happens next. The king takes the thing, cuts it with a penknife, and ‘casts it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth.’ He’s saying, ‘Look, here’s what you do with God’s Word; I don’t believe it,’ and burns it up.

“That guy had an original manuscript! Just like Moses did when he came down off the mountain. Mo had one that was written with the very FINGER of Almighty God! You know what he did with it? He broke them. You know what God did? He re-wrote them.

“Verse 32 says, ‘Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words.’

“He didn’t just reproduce it; he put more into it than was in the original! Did you ever hear anybody complain, ‘Well, when you read a quote in the New Testament it’s never like a quote in the Old Testament. It’s always got different things in it; can’t be the Word of God’?

“Now, which one’s right? I read in Acts 15 where he quotes Amos 9, but what it says in Acts 15 isn’t back there in Amos 9. Acts 15:14 says, ‘Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.
[15] And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written.’

“So which one is God’s Word? Both. You know why? They’re both given by inspiration. Which one of those rolls that Baruch wrote out were the Word of God? Both. Were they exactly the same? No. God’s Word was still growing at that time.

“You can learn a lot about theological arguments by reading your Bible. Weird stuff in this Book. My point to you is the Word of God is where the power of God is.

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“Go to Matthew 22:31. I’ve told people for years this is the verse that kept me from becoming a neo-orthodox; a modernist. It says, ‘But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God . . .’

“That means that what they were reading was the inspired Word; it was the Word of God given by inspiration, spoken by God. It also means it was the preserved, inspired Word of God because they didn’t have original manuscripts!

“All this original manuscript stuff . . .  listen, in the Bible original manuscripts didn’t have the kind of status they have in today’s evangelical theology.

“You don’t find God’s Word by trying to find the original manuscripts. These guys had God’s Word preserved and you know what? The words they were reading weren’t exactly like the ones Moses wrote because there had been 1,500 years of language development. You ever thought about that?!

“And yet Jesus said, ‘What you’re reading is what God said.’ If God had lived in the 1^st Century where Jesus was, that’s the way He would have said exactly what He said to Moses back there. That’s some Book you got there, folks.

“I Thessalonians 2:13 says, ‘For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.’

“So when you believe over here, God’s Word goes into you and begins to work IN YOU. But when we say God’s Word is in you, we don’t mean that you eat that paper and ink right there.

“We mean His breath that He put in this Word, you take that breath out of there and He puts it in you! It requires the conscious positive choice of faith, but that conscious positive choice of faith can become far more natural than you let it be. It doesn’t have to be the kind of thing where you go walk into the wall and get a bloody nose. You can mind the things of the Spirit.”