Reaching down into the library of their vocabularies

On the way home from Illinois this past weekend I listened to a really good sermon on CD that had a date of 2002 on it. I stupidly placed the CD back in a big pile I have and now I don't know which one it was.

I went to Shorewood's online archives to see if some sermon title would spark my memory but wasn't successful, so I will have to go back to the pile and try to find it. While I was "poking" around the archives, which is always a fun excursion, I found this old study:

Psalm 33:6: [6] By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

The breath of His mouth is comparable to the word of the Lord; God spoke out the word and there they were. It’s that simple. Inspiration is that way, says Richard Jordan.

When Paul writes in II Timothy that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God,” he’s just talking about the fact that the scriptures came out of the mouth of God.

Now, in the days of your schooling you had a word for it. The word is not composition; that is, you take an idea and a thought and you sit down and within the framework of your own ability you compose a paragraph that expresses the thought. No, no. The word is dictation. The idea is I tell you the word to write down.

I have my secretary and we sit down and I’m going to answer letters. She’s got a little sign on the back of the typewriter that only I can see, and it’s got a man sitting behind a desk with piles of papers on it and all you see is his nose. He’s looking at her and she’s looking at him and she says, “Read it back?!”

It’s like, “What’s a matter, stupid? You forgot what you said already?” If you ever took dictation, you know the person always says, “Read that back to me.”

She doesn’t listen to what I dictate to her and say, “Well, he needs to say this,” and put it in her own words.

God Almighty reached down into the library of the vocabulary of the men who wrote that Book and selected out of those men’s vocabulary and their experiences and their lives and selected out the very words that He wanted them to write down on a page.

Now, if that bothers you that I take that kind of view of inspiration, I believe that’s exactly how God’s Word . . . I know what people say: “Ahh, you’re just making the Bible writers glorified stenographers.”

I went to a school that said that. They say, “Well, that mechanical dictation.” That’s just a bunch of baloney. You know what, those are terms that modernists developed back 100, 75 and 50 years ago to try and shame Bible-believing Christians from believing in inspiration.

Those terms like “mechanical dictation” were developed by unbelieving modernists and religious liberals to try to shame people that believe God Almighty wrote down words and we have them in a Bible.

God said, “I breathed out the words,” and that means God Himself dictated the words; He chose the words and He sent those words through the pen of human authors so that the very words they used when they wrote the words down were the very words that God determined that they would use.

What you’re dealing with in the Bible is what God said. You’re not dealing with what some man thought God meant. You’re not a neo-orthodox; you’re a Bible-believer. You’re not believing that it’s just an idea and concept. You’re not like this fellow that went around saying, “Well, when it speaks to me then that’s God speaking.”

When you face this book, folks, you’re facing God Almighty’s word! That’s why it’s important you start with an accurate view of what inspiration is so that you understand that when you’re dealing with the Scripture, you’re dealing with what God Himself says.

What God does in inspiration is He takes His Word and He make His Word equal or as good as Himself. You know, down South, all my life, I heard an expression, “A man is only as good as his word.” My dad used to tell me, “Let your word be your bond.” He meant, “Let your word be equal to YOU.”

God’s design, His purpose in inspiration, is to take that Book, the thing that’s written down, and make it equal with Himself so that when you deal with that Book, you’re not dealing with the preacher’s opinion. You’re dealing with what God says.

And if you want to deal with God, you know where you go? You don’t get out on your knees at the end of your bed and say, “Oh, God, appear to me!” You go to that Book.