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At the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the new queen was presented a Bible, with the words, “Our gracious Queen: to keep your Majesty ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God as the Rule for the whole life and government of Christian Princes, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God.”

The Bible is a unique book because it is God’s book. The Scriptures themselves speak to this. For example, the Apostle Paul said, “All Scripture is breathed out by God… (2 Tim. 3:16).” The Apostle is saying here that the Spirit of God, prepared and moved, the authors of Holy Scripture, to write down, at the proper time, precisely what he intended them to write down. This does not mean the authors were passive pens, put under a trance, in the hands of God. Rather, God prepared them in such a way so that at the right time God spoke through their personalities to deliver his word for perpetuity on the pages that would become the Holy Scriptures.

This means the Bible is not the result of people searching for God, but a creation of God to draw his people back to him.

Why does God give words written down in a book? Because God does not relate to us the way one creature relates to another creature. God is not bound by space, time, or anything. For the Infinite to speak to the finite, he stoops down on one knee, like a parent to a child, to communicate on a level we can understand.

Furthermore, our sinful nature would not be able to bear the voice of God if he spoke to us directly. When God delivered the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, the people said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die (Exod 20:19).” A Saturday morning golfer would find out just how bad his golf swing is, if he played with the golf champion of the world. In a far greater way the pure holiness of God’s voice would lay all our moral ugliness. Such a realization would make us want to die.

But God loves us too much to keep us in the dark. So, he uses his written word to speak to us on a level we can comprehend and bear. And he uses this word to communicate to us his saving grace and lead his lost children back home to him.

How do we know this book truly comes from God? That is a hard question for someone who fully trusts in God’s Word to explain so someone who does not. Jesus said unbelief has nothing to do with intellect or being rational. Rather, people simply do not believe because they do not want to. They close their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they truly listen to God’s word.. But, concerning those who did believe, they were to him as sheep are to their shepherd, “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out (John 10).” The Bible is God’s voice leading his sheep home to be with their Shepherd forever.

The same Holy Spirit who breathed out the words of Scripture by the Biblical authors awakens in Christ’s sheep a true, certain, and abiding trust in His words, these words, the lively oracles of God!