1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. 4 They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
6 And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent His angel to show His servants what must soon take place.”
7 “And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”
8 I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, 9 but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.”
10 And he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. 11 Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.”
12 “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. 15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
16 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”
17 The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
18 I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
20 He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.
The KJV translates 2 Timothy 3:16 like this: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.”
This is what theologians are referring to when they talk about the inspiration of Scripture - this idea that God “breathed into” the biblical writers. He did this by His Spirit. The Greek word for Spirit is pneuma, which also means “breath.” So when God breathed into the writers of Scripture, God was ensuring that what they wrote was what He wanted to say.
Justin Peters says that if you want to know what God is saying, read your Bible. If you want to hear what Him audibly, read it out loud.
The ESV translation of 2 Timothy 3:16 is closer to the original Greek when it says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” So what we have in the Bible is directly from God, and therefore each word carries the weight of His authority.
That phrase “all Scripture” is also significant. Because all Scripture is breathed out by God, it means that all of it is completely trustworthy. This is what theologians mean when they talk about the plenary inspiration of Scripture. Plenary means full or complete.
There are no parts of Scripture that are more or less God-breathed than others. Red-letter Bibles are very popular these days, where the words of Jesus are printed in red.
One of the drawbacks here is that we can be tempted to think that direct quotes of Jesus’ words are more authoritative than the rest, in that they carry more weight, but this isn’t true. All Scripture is God-breathed. All of it has the authority of God, because all of it was inspired by His Spirit.
2 Peter 1:21 says, “No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
The Bible is and will always be central in the Christian Church. It is the yardstick against which everything the Church does, needs to be tested. One of the reasons we place an open Bible near the pulpit in our congregation is to remind us that Scripture must be central in our worship and teaching.
In Isaiah 55:8-11 God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
So what is that purpose? Why has God given us the Bible? It’s a question we can hardly do justice to in 20 or so minutes, but today were going to consider just a few of the reasons we have this precious gift we know as God’s Word – the Holy Bible.
One of the first things we learn from the Bible is that without God, we are lost.
Had the Lord not given us the Bible, we would not know about heaven, hell or sin. We are lost, and we need to be rescued. Our greatest need is our need for a Saviour. Every effort to save ourselves has been and will continue to be futile until we recognise we are lost and need a Saviour outside of ourselves.
When someone has a physical illness, he knows he is in need of medical attention, and in much the same way the sinner must know of his spiritual sickness and see his need for salvation.
Until we recognise that we need to be saved from our lost condition, we will never turn to God in repentance and accept His free gift of salvation.
Sin dooms us to be lost, but this was not part of God’s original plan for us. He created us in His image. God is pure and holy, and this is how we were created. The problem we have though is that when we sinned and disobeyed God, we were separated from Him. Isaiah 59:2 says, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear,” and the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:12 “You were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
One of the central messages of the Bible is that the human race, because of our sin, is lost and doomed to eternal death. How would we have known this if God had not given us the Bible? So yes, there is bad news in the Bible, and it is clearly spelled out for us.
But there is good news too, and that is our second point. The Bible also tells us about God’s desire for us to be saved. He could have walked away and left us to our own devices, but because of His great love for us He wants us to be saved.
1 Timothy 2:4 says that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” And 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
In Jesus’ great prayer in John 17 He prays “Sanctify them by the truth; your Word is truth.” When we receive salvation we begin the process of sanctification. And what sanctifies us? God’s truth – His Word – the Bible. Scripture proclaims the means of salvation to us. God’s truth has the power to free us from sin, and as we read the words of the Bible, God reveals to us all we need to know about how we are saved, and how to live these new lives He gives us through Jesus.
It’s in the pages of the Bible where we learn about the wonderful love that God has for us, despite the way that sin has corrupted us so badly.
Not only does He love us, but He sent Jesus to die as a sacrifice for us. The Bible tells us about God’s desire for the salvation of every soul. It teaches us that Jesus established His Church to be the voice that is to speak about the love of God and His plan of salvation to those who are still lost.
The third thing the Bible does is explain in great detail just how and what God has done in order to make our salvation possible.
God created us as intelligent beings. We are able to reason, study and understand, and as we study the Bible we begin to understand the way of salvation.
It’s revealed to us in the Old Testament. Abraham was chosen as the father of a nation of people, and God guided and taught that nation for thousands of years. He told them that through them He would bring Jesus the Saviour into the world. He blessed them when they were obedient but they were also punished when they strayed away from Him. The Old Testament clearly points us to the promised Messiah. There are prophecies and promises throughout the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the New Testament.
In the New Testament we read and learn about the sacrificial death, the victorious resurrection and the glorious coronation of Jesus Christ as King over His kingdom. It is the message the Church continues to proclaim in the world today. The reason we are here is to be encouraged and equipped to take the Good News of Jesus into the world.
The Bible has been given to us to serve as the infallible guide in our lives. If you want to know how to live your life and what God requires of you, look no further than the pages of Scripture.
We’ve already looked at how the Bible reveals our need for salvation, and it also defines salvation for us. But there are actually many people who misunderstand or only partially understand the subject of salvation, and so through His Word, God clearly spells out just what it means to be saved. One of the most important things to learn about our salvation is that when we turn to Jesus in faith, all our sins are forgiven, never to be remembered by God. In the words of Psalm 103:12, “as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.”
Your forgiveness through Jesus is total, and it is complete. If you have put your faith in Jesus, you don’t have to hope that you’re going to heaven when you die. The Bible teaches that your eternal salvation is secure.
The Bible explains to us that our salvation ensures us of an eternal home in heaven and a crown of life, and of course, it speaks about the exclusivity of the means of salvation. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
It doesn’t matter what you believe, just so long as you’re sincere is not enough to save you. Heaven is exclusively a place for Bible believing Christians. Of course, making such a statement in this all-inclusive world is guaranteed to get you into trouble, but this is what the Bible teaches. Jesus Christ is the only means of salvation. Anyone who claims to be a Christian who says that Jesus is one of many ways to God is not a Christian, because that person is going against the Word of God. There are even some ordained ministers who believe that we should still be performing sacrifices in the Church. What they’re basically saying is that the blood of Jesus is not enough to save us. People who teach this are heretics. The Bible is crystal clear in teaching that the only way of being saved is by belief in and obedience to Jesus Christ.
We should not be afraid of proclaiming the truth of the Bible. And we must certainly not make apologies for it. God is God, and we are not – He is the author of the Bible, and it is not our job to defend it. All we are called to do is faithfully proclaim it. Charles Spurgeon was once asked how he would defend the Bible. His classic reply was, “Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a lion. Just turn the Bible loose. It will defend itself.”
From the beginning of time, God has always revealed what He desires of us. The Bible gives us clear instructions on how the redeemed are to live. Ecclesiastes 12:13 says, “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”
God reveals in the Bible how we are saved. Hebrews 5:7-9 says, “In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.”
In order to be saved, we need to hear God’s Word to us. As Paul writes in Romans 10:17, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
We need to believe that Jesus died for us, and that His blood shed on the cross of Calvary is sufficient to pay the price of our sin. Unless if we confess with our own mouths that Jesus Christ is Lord, we remain lost, and doomed to endure the eternal wrath of God. All of these things are taught consistently throughout the Bible.
We also learn in the pages of Scripture that God knows how weak we are and how easily we are tempted by the things of the world, so He equips us by His Spirit to remain faithful to Him. He knows that the cares, riches and pleasures of this life tempt many to desert Him, so we have on record the most amazing prayer ever prayed – Jesus’ prayer in John 17: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” (John 17:14-20)
This prayer reveals to us how we are protected from evil, even though we live in an evil world. To “sanctify” means to set apart or separate from the world and to consecrate yourself to God.
This is why it is so important for us to apply what we learn from Scripture. James 1:22-25 says it best: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
When we learn to apply the word of God to ourselves and live by it, we are in fellowship with God, and we remain under His protection and care.
And of course, the Bible tells us of what is yet to come. This is why our reading this morning was from the very last chapter: “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.” (Revelation 22:12-14)
There are many more reasons for God giving us this precious gift we know as the Bible, and today we have only scratched the surface. The most important thing to remember though is this: God’s purpose in giving us the Bible is only fulfilled when each of us learns its message and applies it to our lives, and in so doing finds the salvation God yearns for us to find and accept.
Gideon’s International do tremendous work in distributing Bibles throughout the world, and even today in many hospitals and hotels you will still find a Gideon’s Bible in your bedside drawer. They were established in 1908, and during those 113 years they have distributed more than 2 billion Bibles all over the world.
Inside the cover of every Gideon’s Bible is this anonymous quote: “The Bible contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you. It is the traveller’s map, the pilgrim’s staff, the pilot’s compass, the soldier’s sword and the Christian’s charter. Here too, Heaven is opened and the gates of Hell disclosed. Christ is its grand subject, our good its design, and the glory of God its end. It should fill the memory, rule the heart and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently and prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a river of pleasure. It is given you in life, will be opened at the judgment, and be remembered forever. It involves the highest responsibility, rewards the greatest labour, and will condemn all who trifle with its sacred contents.”