By "inspiration" I am referring to God moving men to record His words and thoughts in what would eventually be called the Bible.
Did the writers go into a trance and wake up to see pages filled with words that they did not recognize or remember writing?
Did the writers go to sleep with a tooth under their pillow and wake up to find that it had been replaced with a scroll?
Did the writers record their own thoughts and then pray about them to see if that is what God wanted to be said about something?
Fortunately, we don't have to guess about the process of inspiration thanks to passages in the Bible like Jeremiah 36 which record for us how the process of inspiration worked.
So, if you have wondered how it worked then you will find today's post very interesting because I am going to point out four important things about the process of inspiration as found in Jeremiah 36.
1. The Biblical message came to the Biblical writer straight from God w/ a mandate to write.
Listen to what God says to Jeremiah in verse 2--
Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today.
God wants Jeremiah to record everything that he has spoken to him. Clearly, God is interested in Jeremiah recording His message and not Jeremiah's message. Jeremiah understood this and anytime he spoke the his countrymen he would begin with something like, "the word of the Lord came to me."In fact, Jeremiah 36 begins with this in verse one, "In the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord."
The word came to Jeremiah straight from the Lord. It did not go through an intermediary. It did not arrive under his pillow. It did not come out of a trance. It came directly from the mouth of God to Jeremiah.
Peter puts it this way in 2 Peter 1:20-21--
Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from some one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
And it came for a reason. God wanted it to be recorded or written down. God was moving Jeremiah not only to speak but also for the purpose of writing it down. We will look at the "why" of writing it down in points #3 and #4.
2. Sometimes the biblical writer would use a secretary to record God's message.
Jeremiah did not actually write Jeremiah--he dictated it. He spoke it to his secretary Baruch who wrote it down onto a scroll. The process is detailed for us in verse 4:
Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah, and Baruch wrote on a scroll at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord that he had spoken to him.
So, Jeremiah spoke God's message to Baruch and Baruch wrote it down onto a scroll. Jeremiah was not the only writer to use this method.
It is believed that the gospel of Mark was dictated by Peter.
Paul switched in and out of using a secretary for dictation and writing the words down himself. In Romans 16:22, for example, his secretary records this message at the end,"I Tertius, who wrote his letter, greet you in the Lord."
But Paul ended all of his letters by signing them so as to prove their authenticity:
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. 1 Corinthians 16:21
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Colossians 4:18a
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand (implying that the rest of the letter had been written by the hand of a secretary). This is the sign of genuiness in every letter of mine; it is the way I write. 2 Thessalonians 3:17
3) God inspired men so that their message would be heard by his people.
God didn't speak to Jeremiah for his own benefit, but rather for the benefit of all of his people. God said this to Jeremiah in verse 3 right after telling him to write down the message:
It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the disaster that I intend to do to them, so that every one may turn from his evil way, and that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin."
So, God wanted Jeremiah to write it down so that it could be heard and read by his people and that is exactly what Jeremiah told Baruch to do in verse 6:
So you are to go, and on a day of fasting in the hearing of all the people in the Lord's house you shall read the words of the Lord from the scroll that you have written at my dictation. You shall read them also in the hearing of all the men of Judah who have come out of their cities.
God wanted his people to hear his words and so he wanted them to be written down to be read both personally and publicly.
Paul had the same understanding of his inspired writings, look at what he said in these verses:
I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.
1 Thessalonians 5:27
And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.
Colossians 4:16
John wrote that his purpose for recording the gospel of Jesus was for it to be read by others:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may beleive that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in his name.
John 21:30-31
God wanted the men he moved to record his words in order that they might be read by and to his people for their sanctification (increasing holiness) and edification (increasing knowledge).
4) God wanted his words written for posterity.
Not only did God want his words to be written down so that they could be read by and to the contemporary audience but also by the audiences to come.
In Jeremiah 36, the king gets so angry with Jeremiah's messages found in the scroll that Baruch delivers that he burns the entire thing up. What is God's response?
God gives Jeremiah the following message--
Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned. (v. 28)
And Jeremiah follows through in verse 32--
Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them.
Why record them again? Because God wasn't just interested in the sinful Israelites, Judahites, or the king hearing his message but also us!
The Bible was recorded for us--the believers who would come later.
Now you know something about the process of inspiration.
