Jeremiah 23:35

What hath the Lord spoken?

The contents of the Bible

I. Impartiality of its contents. Each writer is an “honest chronicler.” With an unflinching adherence to truth the whole story is told whoever may be unpleasantly involved therein. Such is the undaunted boldness, sterling integrity, and resolute independence of the Scripture scribes that they do not pause to inquire whose faults they are recording. Such is their antipathy to sin in all its forms that they expose the hydra wherever he may be encountered. Ay, the writers even disclose their own faults and infirmities. They unfold their hearts without any reserve. They allude to their own virtuous actions without any ostentation, and do not palliate their vices. They refer to themselves with the same simplicity and fidelity with which they treat of others. Where will you find such a marked feature in any other book?

II. The originality of its contents.

1. Look, for example, at the disclosures given of the Divine Being--read the sublime language of the holy scribes concerning the self-existence, independence, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, justice, long-suffering, and love of the Deity. Whence were these lordly conceptions derived? They were revealed by God to man, and so made known to mortals. You commend us to the productions of Horace; do you forget that a thousand years before his day the lyric poetry of the Hebrews was famous? Read the books of Grecian or Roman authors of the highest standard, and tell me in which of them can you discover themes so stately, thoughts so surprising, and diction so sublime as you have in the Bible

2. Look, again, at the Scripture teaching concerning Christ. Now, such a Divine Being either lived or He did not. If you grant He lived, then the evangelistic narratives are the authoritative biographies of Jesus. If He did not live, then the narratives are fictitious, and the character is an invention. But was it possible for the New Testament writers to have invented such an original character? It is a moral impossibility that they should have concocted a story such as that the New Testament contains. Nor did they gather the elements of the unique character of Christ from any person or persons then living. A sight acquaintance with the condition of society at the time of the Saviour’s appearing will suffice to satisfy us that there were no men who could sit as models to the evangelic artists. Nor did they reproduce themselves. Four men of very different temperaments produce a history of one Man in which all four coincide. There is but one way of accounting for this original, peerless, beautiful life in the Gospels, and that is by accepting the declaration of John--“That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you.”

III. The high moral tone of the contents. From first to last the Book of books holds forth the Divine law as the safe and sole standard of morality. It points to God as the supreme lawgiver, and tells us that He, in His spotlessness, demands purity in man. It condemns not merely the overt evil, but the concealed offence; not only the spoken word, but the voiceless emotions; not alone the guilty act, but the hidden thought of its committal. Where was such elevated morality taught before the Bible propounded it? So far back as the days of Abraham, Egypt was sunk in sensuality and unrighteousness. Whence, then, did Moses obtain the morality with which his writings are full? He could not evolve it from his own brain--that were a greater miracle than the act of Divine revelation. And whence did the evangelists and apostles obtain their sublime and stainless sentiments? Not from Rome, not from Greece. In the lands where Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Plato, Socrates, Virgil, and Cicero wrote--in the countries where philosophers, poets, and orators- of the most distinguished order lived and laboured, idolatry abounded, brutal savageness was patronised, voluptuousness and debauchery were approved. How out of paganism, as it then was, could there have sprung up the noble, beautiful, and blessed system of morality like that we possess in the New Testament? How could the icy, indiscreet, and infamous teachings of heathen philosophy have given birth to the warmhearted, winsome, and wonder-working ethics of our Scriptures? Do men expect figs from thistles?

IV. The beauties of its contents. The volume is full of literary splendours. Picture, proverb, parable, and poem arc blended to produce a superb Book. Creation has been ransacked that its choicest works may embellish the page of inspiration. The fairest flowers of nature are woven into this garland for the brow of Immanuel. The beauties of this volume are like the veins of gold beneath the surface soil. Generations of men intellectually cross and recross the hallowed ground, and remain in entire ignorance of a tithe of the hidden glories. Whole armies of mental athletes handle the sword of the Spirit, without ever detecting the jewels which decorate its hilt. Companies of learned men saunter in the gardens of revelation, examine one plant and another, and-pronounce an opinion upon the whole--an opinion dogmatic and defiant---whilst they have never discovered the sweetest flowers which are concealed by the masses of luxuriant foliage. And yet they who have judged simply by the conspicuous features of the volume are enthusiastic in their praises of the Book, even our enemies themselves being judges.

V. The prominence given to Christ. It is said that a celebrated artist of ancient times constructed a shield of so remarkable an order that he had worked his name into the device in a manner that it could not be removed. To erase the name you must destroy the shield. Thus is it emphatically with the Bible. From Genesis to Revelation the whole volume points to Jesus. He is the centre and soul of the Book. Take away Jesus from the Book of books, and you have a casket without a jewel, an envelope without a letter, a scaffolding without any superstructure, musical notation without any melody, a frame without a portrait, an assembly without a leader, ages of preparation on the most extensive scale for an event that never happens, centuries of practice for an oratorio that is never performed. From the fatal declension of Adam, He was the subject of promise and prophecy. In paradise He was referred to as the “seed of the woman.” Abraham “rejoiced to see His day,” and avowed that the Lord would “provide Himself a Lamb.” Jacob spake of Him as the coming “Shiloh,” Moses foretold the rising of a “Prophet,” Balaam saw Him as a “Star” and a “Sceptre,” Job rejoiced in the life of his “Redeemer,” David described the agonies, death, and resurrection of the “Holy One,” Solomon ecstatically praised his “Beloved,” Isaiah graphically dwelt upon the doings of the “tender Plant,” and the “precious Corner-stone.” He was Jeremiah’s “Branch,” Ezekiel s “River,” Daniel s “Ancient of Days”, Hosea’s “Lord of hosts,” Joel s “Latter-day Glory,” Obadiah s Saviour, Jonah s Salvation, Micah’s “Peace,” Nahum’s “Him that bringeth good tidings,” Habakkuk’s “Strength,” Haggai’s “Desire of all nations,” Zechariah s “Fountain,” and Malachi’s “Sun of Righteousness.” How can you account for such a marked blending of all writers on one theme--such a manifest gravitation of thought toward one point--such a glorious clustering of hope, expectation, and joy around one centre? How was it that these scribes, separated by ages, and climes, and callings, and capacities, all looked Christward? There is but one answer. All were under the invisible spell of the Saviour’s attractive influence--all felt the centripetal force of the Cross which was to be erected on Calvary--all were God-guided and God-taught. (J. H. Hitchens.)