Psalm 18:30 - Scriptural Inerrancy

Psalm 18:30
As for God, His way is blameless;
The word of the Lord is tried;
He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him.

Message: Scriptural Inerrancy

Time: The psalms were written by many different people across a period of a thousand years in Israel's history. They are thought to have been compiled and put together in their present form by some unknown editor shortly after the captivity ended about 537 B.C.

What the Lord is Saying:

The Bible is the only source of special revelation that we possess and we believe this God's final revelation to his people occurred by witnesses of Jesus' resurrection and by the end of the 1st century or about 100 AD all of those witnesses had passed away, most of them martyred for their faith. Thus the Bible is authority to us - all of us - all of us believers and this includes our church leaders. Although many church leaders often think that they have a different sort of revelation or even a greater revelation, the reality is that all persons have the same revelation or access to the same revelation.

And everything that the Bible speaks is true. There is no falsehood in the pages. Thus we can affirm the words from Psalm 18:30 which says The Word of the Lord is tried or proven true. John 17:7 also tells us that every word Jesus spoke came from the Father and therefore it is true.

What we know also is the inerrancy of Scripture has to do with the words spoke by God directly to the writers. What we possess today are hand-written copies or manuscripts of those inspired Words. Yet the Bible is preserved better than any other ancient book.

The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work of literature, with over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts catalogued, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian.

For the Old Testament there are over 10,000 manuscripts. The most significant of these were the 200 manuscripts found in 1947 known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are more than 200 biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of them were written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. They were written before the year 70 AD.

One of my favorite writers is Albert Barnes, an 18th century theologian, states of this verse:

The word of the Lord is tried - Margin, refined. The idea is, that his word had been tested as silver or any other metal is in the fire. The psalmist had confided in him, and had found him faithful to all his promises. Compare the note at Psalm 12:6. In a larger sense, using the phrase the "word of the Lord" as denoting the revelation which God has made to mankind in the volume of revealed truth, it has been abundantly tested or tried, and it still stands. It has been tested by the friends of God, and has been found to be all that it promised to be for support and consolation in trial; it has been tested by the changes which have occurred in the progress of human affairs, and has been found fitted to meet all those changes; it has been tested by the advances which have been made in science, in literature, in civilization, and in the arts, and it has shown itself to be fitted to every stage of advance in society; it has been tested by the efforts which men have made to destroy it, and has survived all those efforts. 

It is settled that it will survive all the revolutions of kingdoms and all the changes of dynasties; that it will be able to meet all the attacks which shall be made upon it by its enemies; and that it will be an unfailing source of light and comfort to all future ages. If persecution could crush it, it would have been crushed long ago; if ridicule could drive it from the world, it would have been driven away long ago; if argument, as urged by powerful intellect, and by learning, combined with intense hatred, could destroy it, it would have been destroyed long ago; and if it is not fitted to impart consolation to the afflicted, to wipe away the tears of mourners, and to uphold the soul in death, that would have been demonstrated long ago. In all these methods it has been "tried," and as the result of all, it has been proved as the only certain fact, in regard to a book as connected with the future - that the Bible will go down accredited as a revelation from God to the end of the world.

Promise: though we do not have the original written words from the apostles and prophets hat God inspired we can compare all of the manuscripts to determine the original text. Thus, we can fully trust the writings.

Prayer: O God I thank you for entrusting your word to faithful men and providing us so many manuscripts of your spoken words. You are faithful in providing us what we need. Thank you for the confidence we can have in these words. Continue to dispel the questions people have and draw people to yourself through these words. The j you for making them an anchor in my life.


Note: I follow the readings from the Tabletalk Magazine devotional, though I am a little behind and working through 2017 devotionals. 2017 is a study of key biblical doctrines with February being about the doctrine of revelation and the various aspects of the doctrine of Scripture that sola Scriptura seeks to preserve.