What God cannot do!

‘God, that cannot lie.’ Titus 1:2

Suggested Further Reading: John 17:6–19

Walking through our museums nowadays, we smile at those who think that Scripture is not true. Every block of stone from Nineveh, every relic which has been brought from the Holy Land, speaks with a tongue which must be heard even by the deaf adder of secularism, and which says, ‘Yes, the Bible is true, and the Word of God is no fiction.’ Beloved, we may rest assured that we have not a word in the Book of God which is untrue. There may be an interpolation or two of man’s which ought to be revised and taken away, but the Book as it comes from God is truth, and nothing but truth; not only containing God’s Word, but being God’s Word; being not like a lump of gold inside a mass of quartz, but all gold, and nothing but gold; and being inspired to the highest degree. I will not say verbally inspired but more than that, having a fulness more than that which the letter can convey, having in it a profundity of meaning such as words never had when used by any other being, God having the power to speak a multitude of truths at once. And when he means to teach us one thing according to our capability of receiving it, he often teaches us twenty other things, which for the time we do not comprehend, but which by and by, as our senses are exercised, reveal themselves by the Holy Spirit. Every time I open my Bible I will read it as the Word of ‘God, that cannot lie;’ and when I get a promise or a threatening, I will either rejoice or tremble because I know that these stand fast.

For meditation: Because God cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18), he does not lie (Numbers 23:19). Every word of his is pure truth (Proverbs 30:5; John 17:17). Do you love that as good news or hate it as bad news?

Sermon no. 568
8 May (1864)