Late summer and early fall are times families spend their Saturdays canning fruits and vegetables for the coming year. Through a process of cleaning, sterilizing, and cooking the goods canned are insured to be safe and enjoyable when later needed.

In a similar way God has preserved his word so the Scriptures we read are safe and enjoyable, whenever we read them. One difference between preserved vegetables and the preserved Word of God is that the vegetable undergoes a certain amount of change in texture and taste in the preserving process, whereas the books of the Bible are essentially the same sense they were originally written.

How can this be? Consider what holds the universe together. Hebrews 1:3 tells us Jesus sustains all things by his word. The word sustains means to carry or to bear. Colossians 1:17 says that in Jesus all things hold together. As Jesus carries the universe holding it all together, so God preserves the original books of the Bible making them available to us today.

One way God used to preserve his word was through the painstaking manner in which it was copied. Before the age of the printing press each copy was made by hand, checked, and double-checked by people trained to look for the smallest error. Since erasers had not yet been invented, whenever a mistake was found standard procedure was to throw out the entire copy. Today copies are printed on high-speed presses, whereas then the Scriptures were methodically copied and even translated from one language to another, word-by-word, and sometimes letter-by-letter just to protect its ancient sayings.

Such a preservation is important because it allows us to trust that the Bible we read is indeed God’s Word. When we read words such as believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, we can be confident that these words mean the same thing today as when they were first written.

We’ve all stumbled our way through a dark room. We bump into the chair, the table, or step on a child’s toy while we desperately search for a light switch.  Once the light is on we are able to clearly see everything in the room.

The Bible can sometimes seem like a dark room.  We may read it, but we don’t understand what we read.  The light of understanding is still turned off in our mind, but once it is turned on then understanding comes. The process whereby God turns the light on in our minds is called illumination.  It is a specific act of God whereby we are able to understand the meaning of a particular passage in Scripture.

The apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church states what  comes from the Spirit of God is spiritually discerned, meaning that the light switch of our understanding must be turned on by the Holy Spirit.  After his resurrection Jesus walked along the Emmaus road with two of his disciples.  They did not recognize him and were mourning because they thought he was still dead, however the Bible says beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained to them the Scriptures. He turned on the lights of Scripture for them to understand.

In a sense the Bible is like all other literature; nouns are nouns, verbs are verbs.  In another sense it is unique. It is a book whose spiritual message can only be understood by our spirits when God’s Spirit illumines our minds by turning on the light switch of understanding within us. Perhaps you’ve read a certain passage of Scripture repeatedly without being able to grasp it, then one day someone explains the meaning to you, or perhaps one day it just makes sense. The light gets turned on in our minds.

Once a light is turned on in a room it’s on.  You can’t turn it more on, however our understanding of Scripture can and should continue to get brighter as God’s Spirit does his work in our lives. The Bible is not just a book we read, it’s a book God teaches us by the Holy Spirit turning on our understanding.

You’re sitting in the concert hall, having arrived a few minutes early.  You can hear the orchestra tuning up.  You may occasionally see the curtain move as someone or something moves behind it.  The lights are on, but you are in the dark about what’s happening on stage, except perhaps for a few educated guesses.

But then the time arrives, and the curtain goes up.  All that was once hidden is now open to view.

That’s the idea of revelation; it’s an unveiling, a making known of what has been hidden.

Theologians usually divide revelation into two categories—general, sometimes called natural, and special.  General revelation is called such because it is generally available.  It is not restricted to any one person or group.  It is sometimes called natural because it is based in nature.  “The heavens declare the glory of God” as the Psalmist says.  Human conscience gives us information about morality, telling us that there is a right and a wrong and pointing us to a standard for morals.

Special revelation is restricted in some way.  It may be a dream or vision given to only one person.  It may also be communicated by a secondary agent, as when Moses passed on to Israel what God had shown him on the mountain.  The preeminent form of special revelation is the personal revelation of God in Christ.  Special revelation is also the propositional communication of God to us in the Bible.

Revelation is the basis for all the theological enterprise.  Without revelation we have only religion; never theology.  Revelation is also the most hotly contested area of Christian theology.  Kill that and the rest withers away.

When establishing the authority of Scripture, we often look to verses like 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God….” But what does it mean to be inspired by God? It is important to have a solid understanding of this concept to understand Scripture and to represent God and His Word to a lost world.

We use the words “inspiration” and “inspired” to discuss great performances by athletes, actors, or musicians. Is this what is meant by inspiration of Scripture, that the writers of Scripture were moved with great intellect and emotion to write the words of God? The NIV translation of 2 Tim. 3:16 uses the phrase “God breathed.” This is a great translation because it gives a word picture of the concept, one where God is actively involved in the work. The phrase “God breathed” implies more than just emotional or intellectual influence; it implies purposeful direction. As 2 Tim. 3:16 says, God inspires all of Scripture. This view of the Scriptures is often referred to as verbal-plenary inspiration. Verbal inspiration means the inspiration extends to the words themselves, not just concepts or ideas. Plenary inspiration is the idea that the whole of Scripture is inspired, that it is complete.

Painters can be inspired by the beauty of a woman or a sunset when painting a masterpiece. But neither the sunset nor the woman have the painter’s painting in mind when displaying their beauty. God did have a purpose in mind when inspiring the writers. “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”–2 Peter 1:21 This verse uses the phrase “carried along.” Other translation use the word “moved.” This gives the picture of direction with a purpose. In Acts 25:15-17 we find the same word being used to describe Paul’s ship being driven by the wind. The ship is still a ship but was at the mercy of the wind. As you apply this to the inspiration of Scripture, God used men to write His words. They, like the ship had all their faculties and resources, yet God directed them. He used their personalities and writing styles, but within His sovereign purpose and plan. God moved men purposely to create a written revelation of His glory.

Although we have just scratched the surface in this short note, I would encourage you to dig deeper into this topic and see how important is was to our fathers in the faith.

Once upon a time there was a man working on his own house who used one ruler in the house and another in his workshop. He discovered after cutting out all the pieces that the rulers were 1/16^th of an inch different and nothing fit together correctly.

If you don’t verify your ruler against the official one—wherever it is kept—or at least compare the ones you’re using to make sure they match, you could be headed for a lot of wasted time, frustration, and expense.

Islam looks different than Christianity because it uses a different standard—the Koran and not the Bible. Judaism is not Christianity because its standard of belief includes only books prior to Christ. Roman Catholicism looks a little different from Protestantism because it uses a Bible with different contents.

The word “canon” comes from an ancient word meaning “reed,” the measuring stick of the ancient workman. It is used theologically to mean the authoritative collection of books that governs faith and practice.

Theology depends not only upon the fact of revelation, and its nature (expressed in the word “inspiration”), but also in its extent. If our canon is wrong, then we may disregard some revealed truth we didn’t include or take as truth something that really isn’t.

In a theological sense the canon is driven by inspiration. Inspired writings imply a collection of some kind with continuing authority. In a practical sense, the canon involves an historical process of discernment. How this works exactly is one of the great bones of contention between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.