Baccalaureate Sermon preached to the Graduating Class of BIOLA, June 1920, embodying the doctrines believed and taught by the school. Condensed.
M y message this morning is primarily for the sixty- three students who on the 24th of this month are to graduate from the Bible Institute of Los An geles and who are going out into all parts of the world to preach Jesus Christ as the only, but all- sufficient, way of life to perishing men, women and children in many lands. But I have sought from God a message that would be helpful to every student in the Institute and also everyone who should come here this morning. Our subject is: The Final Authority of the Word; the Priceless Value of the Blood; the Ir resistible Power of the Holy Spirit and Infinite Efficacy of Prayer. It is not difficult to find texts for such a message. Indeed, so many texts immediately occur to one that the only difficulty is to decide which to select and which to omit. The five texts that we retain are: John 10:35, “ The Scripture cannot be broken” ; I Peter 1:18, 19, “ Knowing that ye were redeemed not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers: but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ” ; Acts 1:8, “ But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth"; Acts 6:10, “ And they were not able to withstand the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake” ; John 14:13-14, “ And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son: If he shall ask anything in my Name, that will I do.” In the first of our texts, John 10:35, we read, “ The Scripture cannot be broken.” We have here the plain and unmistakable assertion of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself of the final authority of the Scripture, of the irrefragability, the inerrancy, and unfailing dependability of the Word of God.” In Mat thew 4:4, 7, 10 we have a very impressive illustra tion of the final authority of the Word. The three verses occur at the three critical points in the great earthly conflict between Him whom God had appoint ed to be the Saviour of the world and him who had selected himself to wrest the world from its alle giance to the Creator and to His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and thus to capture its allegiance for himself. Satan had put before our Lord his final three temptations and had sought to enforce them with arguments of consummate subtlety worthy of him who before his fall had been “ full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty,” “ sealing up the sum” of created DECEMBER, 1970
perfection. But our Lord had answered all of these subtle arguments of the Devil with a single phrase, “ It is written.” Written where? “ Written in the one and only Book of God, the written Word of God, the Scripture, the Bible.” Could there by any possibility be a more decisive or more impressive proof of the final authority of the Word of God than that? What God had said, what God had “ written” was to the Son of God the final arbiter of what man should think and what man should do. To Him if a single sentence or part of a sentence taken in its context taught anything, that settled it for all time, for, to use His own words, “ The Scripture cannot be bro ken.” What Scripture says is final and must be be lieved and what it commands is final and must be obeyed. When our Lord uttered these conclusive words, “ The Scripture cannot be broken,” He was setting forth as an end of all argument one single word God had used in Psalm 82:6. The Word of God as set forth in the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New, for every really intelligent follower of Jesus Christ is the final authority in every question of faith and practice. The Bible is the final Court of Appeal to anyone who has a right to call himself a Christian. Jesus, the Real Christ, the only Christ, says, “ The Scripture cannot be broken, that it is irrefragable, inerrant, absolutely dependable, final in all its assertions. Happy is the preacher, happy is the Christian worker of any sort, happy is the most ungifted and ordinary Christian who accepts the attitude of our Lord Jesus Christ toward the Word of God, found in the Bible; who accepts the Final Authority of the Word of God, settles every question of doctrine by an appeal to the Book; the one who asks, “ What saith the Scripture?” and when he finds that out, that settles it. Some try, indeed spend a great amount of pre cious time and invaluable energy in trying to make the Bible fit into their theories. Immeasurably wiser and happier is the man who forms his theories out of the facts taught in the Bible and who seeks sin cerely to make his every doctrine and every course of conduct square with the “ pattern shown in the mount," the pattern of God’s inerrant Word. Some preachers who “ professing themselves to be wise have become fools” (Rom. 1:22), call those who take this attitude toward the Bible, “ bibliolaters,” that is, worshippers of the Bible. Not at all. We are not worshippers of the Bible, but we are worshippers of the God who speaks in the Bible, the God and Fa ther of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; for “ this 31
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