Sinclair B. Ferguson

So doctrine is important.

And I want to think first of all today about what do we think about the doctrine of the Bible?

I remember years and years ago, I was reading a document called The Scots Confession.

It was written in 1560, and you'll know the name of at least one of the authors.

If you need a clue to guess his name, here's an unusual one.

For a century, this confession was a kind of guiding light to Scottish Christians, pointing them to Christ and the faith once delivered to the saints.

And in the introduction to it, this is what struck me, Knox and his friends wrote that if anyone found anything in the confession that was misleading, they should tell them, and they would respond to them, Knox wrote, and I'm quoting here, they would respond, from the mouth of God.

They were talking about the Bible, of course.

I remember my instantaneous thought was, what a tremendous way to describe the Bible, the mouth of God.

But then, of course, my next thought was it wasn't John Knox who came up with that expression.

It's how Jesus described the Bible.

You remember when he was tempted?

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And Jesus himself was actually quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 8 and verse 3.

Of course, Paul puts it the same way, but in different words.

He tells us that the scriptures are God-breathed.

So, I think we could say, in thinking about the doctrine of Scripture, that perhaps the simplest, the most basic, and in many ways the most helpful way for us to read the Bible is to think of it as the mouth of God, and when we read it, to think of ourselves as listening to God Himself speak, because indeed He does speak through the Bible.

And because that's true, it tells us a lot about the authority of the Bible and also about the reliability of the Bible.

If God is speaking through it, we can trust it.

And if God is telling us something by it, we should do it.