Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me

by Kevin DeYoung

Law, testimonies, precepts, statutes, commandments, rules, promises, word—this language appears in almost every verse, and often more than once in the same verse. The terms have different shades of meaning (e.g., what God wants, or what God appoints, or what God demands, or what God has spoken), but they all center on the same big idea: God’s revelation in words.

Good explanation of word and phrases uded for Gods word in Ps119

In effect, I’m starting this book with the conclusion. Psalm 119 is the goal. I want to convince you (and make sure I’m convinced myself) that the Bible makes no mistakes, can be understood, cannot be overturned, and is the most important word in your life, the most relevant thing you can read each day.

Big idea

When we embrace everything the Bible says about itself, then—and only then—will we believe what we should believe about the word of God, feel what we should feel, and do with the word of God what we ought to do.

Or maybe the is has big idea...

Too often, Christians reflect on only what they should believe about the word of God. But Psalm 119 will not let us stop there. This love poem forces us to consider how we feel about the word of God. We see that the psalmist has three fundamental affections for God’s word.

Yup!

You can’t establish the supreme authority of your supreme authority by going to some other lesser authority. Yes, the logic is circular, but no more so than the secularist defending reason by reason or the scientist touting the authority of science based on science. This doesn’t mean Christians can be irrational and unreasonable in their views, but it does mean our first principle is neither rationality nor reason. We go the Bible to learn about the Bible because to judge the Bible by any other standard would be to make the Bible less than what it claims to be.

Very helpful

This cannot be stated too strongly: From the very beginning, Christianity tied itself to history. The most important claims of Christianity are historical claims, and on the facts of history the Christian religion must stand or fall.

Sosososososososo important. See Machen, Christianity and History

The phrase “concursive operation” is often used to describe the process of inspiration, meaning that God used the intellect, skills, and personality of fallible men to write down what was divine and infallible. The Bible is, in one sense, both a human and a divine book. But this in no way implies any fallibility in the Scriptures. The dual authorship of Scripture does not necessitate imperfection any more than the two natures of Christ mean our Savior must have sinned. As Calvin says about the prophets, “[they] dared not to announce anything of their own, and obediently followed the Spirit as their guide, who ruled in their mouth as in his own sanctuary.”

Helpful terminilogy and expkanatiin for duak aothorshio of Scripture

stands over us and we never stand over the word of God. When we reject inerrancy we put ourselves in judgment over God’s word.

Contra Rob Bell

You can use the word of God to come to wrong conclusions, but you cannot find any wrong conclusions in the word of God.

Have you ever wondered if the Bible is really able to help you with your deepest problems? Have you struggled to know what to do with your life, and wished you had some special word from the Lord? Have you ever thought to yourself that the biblical teaching on sexuality needs updating? Have you ever wished for a more direct, more personal revelation than what you get from slowly reading through the Bible? Have you ever secretly wanted to add something to the word of God—you know, just to make things safer? Have you ever wanted to take something away to make the Bible more palatable? Have you ever assumed that the Bible doesn’t say anything about how to worship God or how to order his church? Have you ever felt like the Bible just wasn’t enough for living a faithful life in today’s world? If you can answer yes to any of these questions—and we all will at times—then you are struggling with the sufficiency of Scripture.

A great intro to the sufficiency of scripture. Hi hits many Of the most important questions which find their answer in the fish sufficiency have scripture. A whole lesson could be based off of Teaching on sufficiency and then briefly demonstrating and answer to each of these questions.

(WCF 1.7)

This passage perfectly demonstrates what it means to affirm the authority of the Bible. When it says the Bereans were “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (v. 11), the implication is that if the Scripture said it, they would believe it. And if they couldn’t find Paul’s teaching confirmed in and consistent with the Scripture, they would reject Paul’s teaching. The written word of God was their authority. It had the last word. It was the final word, after which no other word would be necessary, and contrary to which no other word would be believed.

(WCF 1.10)

I sympathize with Christians who struggle to reconcile what they hear from scientists and what they see in the Bible about a particular issue. We should not be quick to dismiss these questions. It is possible to read the Bible wrongly. It is possible for the church to miss the mark for a long time. But every Christian should agree that if the Bible teaches one thing and scientific consensus teaches something else, we will not ditch the Bible.

Very heloful statement on Bible and science

The Two Books are not separate, but they are unequal.

Very important note on general and special revelation

But surely it is the mark of a Christian to believe everything the Bible teaches no matter who says it can’t be so. Academic journals are not infallible, let alone high school textbooks or fifteen-second sound bites. As Christians we must always be willing to change our minds when we see that we have misread the Scriptures, but that is a far cry from setting aside the Scriptures because for the last five years—or fifty years or a hundred and fifty years—some scientists have informed us that we can’t believe in the historicity of Adam or that the universe was created out of nothing by the word of God. General revelation can show us there is a God and convict those who don’t worship him rightly. But special revelation speaks more clearly, more openly, and more authoritatively. If Scripture gets the last word, we should never change a jot or tittle of the Holy Book merely because the book of nature—for a time and according to some voices—seems to suggest we should.

At to prev statement as helpful statement on Bubke and science

But given everything we have already seen about a biblical doctrine of Scripture, we have no reason to be intimidated by difficulties and apparent discrepancies in the Bible. Many of them are easily explained. Most of the rest of them have good, plausible solutions. And for the few humdingers that are left, there are possible explanations, even if we aren’t sure that we’ve found the right one yet. Our confidence in the Bible is not an irrational confidence. The findings of history, archaeology, and textual criticism give us many reasons to trust the Old and New Testaments. But more than all the apologetic evidence—and it can be found by anyone who cares to read the best books out there—we have the testimony of God himself. The Bible is God’s book, a fact we are reminded of frequently in the book. Consequently, to trust completely in the Bible is to trust in the character and assurances of God more than we trust in our own ability to reason and explain.

Helpful note on Bible difficulties i.e. "errors in Bible"

(WCF 1.1).