The sermon preached by Dr David Allen, Senior Deputation Speaker (retired), at the 188th Annual General Meeting of the Society. The transcript has been edited for publication. 

Please turn with me in the Word of God to John 5.39: ‘Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me’. The Lord Jesus Christ had healed an impotent man—an invalid—at the pool of Bethesda but because He had healed this man on a Sabbath day the Jews sought to slay Him. In the discourse which followed, the Lord Jesus Christ claimed absolute equality with God the Father. Indeed, between verses 17 and 29 we have one of the most profound portions of Holy Scripture, in which the Lord Jesus Christ makes seven remarkable claims concerning Himself and then provides four further witnesses to the validity of those claims. 

By way of introduction I mention just three of Jesus’s claims regarding Himself.

The first claim He makes is in verse 17: ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work’. In this one verse the Lord Jesus Christ claims absolute equality with God the Father. There cannot be any misunderstanding of His words, no mistaking the force of His language here. In this one utterance Christ places Himself on the same level as God the Father, coequal and co-eternal with the Father. His accusers fully understood the force of the Lord’s statement—that He was making Himself equal with God—and at once their anger was kindled against Him: ‘the Jews sought the more to kill him’ (verse 18). 

The second statement to which I draw your attention is in verse 19, ‘Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise’. This can be compared with verse 30, ‘I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me’. It is clear in these verses that the Lord is claiming that He cannot act independently of the Father’s will. Christ’s will is absolutely one with that of God the Father. His will is in perfect union with that of the Father. In John 6.38 our Lord says, ‘For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me’, and in John 10.30 He says, ‘I and my Father are one’. His first recorded utterance was, ‘wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?’ (Luke 2.49). And again in the wilderness He declared, ‘My meat is to do the will of him that sent me’ (John 4.34). Thus we see that Christ’s will is absolutely one with that of God the Father. 

The third statement of our Lord to which I draw your attention is in John 5.21, ‘For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will’. In this verse our Lord claims divine sovereignty. The healing of the impotent man was a clear demonstration of His power and His absolute sovereignty. Chapter 5 begins with the pool of Bethesda where lay a great multitude of impotent men, but the Lord only healed one. He fixed His eye upon that one man and healed that one man, singling that one man out. He heals whom He will.

After these three statements where our Saviour claims equality with God the Father He gives four witnesses to His equality. He declares in verse 31, ‘If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true’ (also see 2 Corinthians 13.1 and Deuteronomy 19.15). He has borne witness of Himself and now He cites others who bear witness of Him. First He speaks of God the Father (verse 37), ‘the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape’. God the Father witnessed of Him ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3.17).

The second witness whom He cites is John Baptist in John 5.33–35, ‘Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light’.

Then He brings forth a third witness: the miracles which He had performed. In verse 36 He says, ‘But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me’. The very miracles that He performed bore witness that He had been sent by God the Father. Indeed, Nicodemus had to confess, ‘we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him’ (John 3.2).

In spite of the extravagant claims of many of our day we do not witness those biblical miracles. We do not see the leper instantly cleansed; we do not witness the paralysed and lame restored in an instant; we do not see those born blind receiving their sight; we do not see the dead being raised to life.

The fourth witness He cites is the Holy Scriptures (5.39): ‘Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me’. This last witness is without question of utmost importance. John Baptist has long since passed away. The miracles of Christ are no longer before our eyes. The voice of the Father no longer thunders from the heavens. But the Scriptures remain, and the Scriptures testify of Christ. The Holy Scriptures, given by inspiration by God, are the final court of appeal. Above them there is no higher authority; beyond them there is no appeal; after them there is no further witness. 

Thus we turn to our text in John 5.39. I would draw attention to three points: first we look at the Scriptures; second we search the Scriptures; and finally we look at the Saviour in those Scriptures. 

Look at the Scriptures

First then ‘Search the scriptures’. The fifth aim of the Trinitarian Bible Society is ‘To uphold the Bible as the inspired, inerrant Word of God’. The Bible is no common book. The Scriptures are inspired. 

The Apostle Peter writes in 2 Peter 1.21, ‘For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’. As David, Moses, Solomon, the prophets and the apostles took their quills in hand and began to write upon those ancient papyrus scrolls, something happened to them. Peter tells us they were moved by the Holy Ghost: the third Person of the Blessed and Holy Trinity took hold of those godly men and moved them and bore them along and carried them. The Greek word for moved in 2 Peter 1 is the same as that in Acts 27.15 translated ‘drive’ in referring to a ship driven by the wind. Here is the Apostle Paul being carried to Rome in that sailing ship that is caught in a tremendous gale. The captain tries to hold that boat into the wind but to no avail. He realises that to save that boat and all that are on that boat he has to let that boat to be taken by the wind and carried in the direction that the wind would take it.

In like manner when the Holy Spirit came upon those men of God, He took hold of them, moved them and drove them in the direction that He Himself would have them go. Thus the Apostle Paul could declare to Timothy (2 Timothy 3.16) that all Scripture—not some of it, not most of it: all Scripture—is given by inspiration of God. 

Yet this is not mechanical dictation. The Holy Spirit carried those godly men along; He drove them and bore them along but in such a manner that He used their individual gifts, intellectual abilities and personalities. Thus we are left with, for example, the rough simplicity of the Gospel according to Mark, the wonderful poetry and harmonic melody of the Psalms of David, and the majestic eloquence of the Apostle Paul: yet their words all inspired.

The second thing I want to say about the Scriptures is about their purity. God, we are told in Titus 1.2, cannot lie. God alone is truth and cannot inspire falsehood; He cannot inspire error, for God is truth. 

The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 12.6, ‘The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times’. The picture that is brought before us is that of a silversmith who receives ore from the mine. He makes a furnace in the earth and puts a crucible of the ore in that furnace. The furnace is heated up to 962 degrees Celsius, at which temperature the silver and the ore melt. The silversmith takes that crucible and removes the dross then puts that crucible back in the furnace and once more heats it up. This is repeated seven times so that the silver that emerges is the purest, the finest silver imaginable, without any trace whatsoever of base metal or dross; it is silver of silver. 

Now says the Psalmist ‘The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times’. Agur declares in Proverbs 30.5, ‘Every word of God is pure’; not some of it, not most of it, but every word of it. From ‘In the beginning’ in Genesis 1.1 to the last amen at the end of Revelation 22.21, every word of God is pure. That is why a man like William Tyndale would not alter one syllable of God’s Word against his conscience. 

The third thing I mention concerning the Scriptures is their preservation. Having read the articles of faith of many Christian societies (including many Bible societies) and many churches, it is clear to me that they do not hold to this vital doctrine. Often these statements of faith read something like: ‘We believe the Scriptures as originally given are inerrant’. That sounds fine; but what they mean is that the only pure Scriptures are the actual handwritten manuscripts produced by the hand of Moses, David, the prophets, and the apostles—manuscripts that we no longer have. However, what we do have are accurate, meticulous copies of those original autographa. The Westminster Confession of Faith, the Baptist Confession of 1689, the Savoy Declaration of 1659, all agree with Westminster’s statement (1.8) regarding the copies of the original manuscripts that were available to them. 

The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical. (emphasis added)

One of the gift s the Lord promised to His church was scribes (Matthew 23.34): men who meticulously, painstakingly, accurately copied the Word of God from generation to generation. Consider for a moment Isaiah 59.21, ‘As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever’. In this remarkable declaration Jehovah Himself promises two things. First, the church will always have the presence of the Holy Spirit; and second, the church will always have the pure Word of the living God. 

Consider the end of the glorious hundredth Psalm. Verse 5 says, ‘For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations’. According to a multitude of Greek scholars in our day and generation, the church did not have the pure Word of God in the New Testament for the better part of 1,400 years. Thirty-five generations of Christians lacked the pure Word of God until Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus—manuscripts that had been squirrelled away for centuries— came to light. The Reformers were bereft of the pure Word of God; the Puritans would not have had the pure Word of God; those mighty preachers of the eighteenth century did not have the pure Word of God. Even Spurgeon lacked the pure Word of God. 

I prefer to believe my Bible: ‘his truth endureth to all generations’ (Psalm 100.5). We believe that the Holy Scripture has endured to all generations, and that its truth is found in the Hebrew Masoretic Text of the Old Testament and the Greek Received Text of the New Testament— texts which underlie the English Authorised (King James) Version and all those great Reformation Bibles of Europe and which have been available to God’s people throughout their generations.  

First then we have the Scriptures: their inspiration, their purity and their preservation.

Search the Scriptures

Second, we have the search. Note that the Lord Jesus Christ did not say read the Scriptures, profitable as that is. Nor did He say memorise the Scriptures— valuable indeed but not what He said. He said ‘search the Scriptures’: search the Scriptures as you would search for hidden treasure in the earth; dig down deep and discern what lies beneath the depths. These things do not lie on the surface to be discovered by the casual reader. They lie like a hidden treasure very deep and accessible only with the help of the Holy Spirit. 

There is a grammatical problem with the verb ‘search’ and I point those interested in the full treatment to read the article by Larry Brigden in Quarterly Record 619 beginning on page 12. The question is this: is the verb ‘search’ in the indicative mood—a statement—or is it in the imperative mood—a command? The New International Version reads ‘You diligently study the Scriptures’; the New English Bible reads ‘you study the Scriptures diligently’; the Revised Standard Version, the New King James Version, the English Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible all have it in the indicative, as the statement ‘you search the Scriptures’. Men like Erasmus, Matthew Poole, John Bengel, Philip Doddridge, William Hendrickson, and even Dr John Gill think that the verb is in the indicative, implying that this was something that they were already doing.

But was it instead an imperative—a command? Men like Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Bishop Ryle, and Bishop Wordsworth believed it to be a command, ‘search the Scriptures’. Here is Christ commanding them to search the Scriptures. The imperative mood seems best to fit the context. If they were in the habit of diligently searching the Scriptures, as these modern translations would have us believe, surely those searchers would have found that by seeking they shall find. Yet our Lord in the previous verse had just declared, ‘ye have not his word abiding in you’. I believe the imperative mood is more appropriate; it is a command from the Lord Himself to ‘search the Scriptures’

The force of this search is that we are to concentrate all our attention upon the Word of God, diligently searching and examining each expression, tracing every verse and word. It is as if the Lord was saying to them, Go and search your Old Testament Scriptures; examine them, become deeply acquainted with them. And if you do that you will soon discover that the Scriptures—those same Old Testament Scriptures—testify of Me. If you wish to know God the Father’s testimony of Me, go and search your own Scriptures for these are the Scriptures of truth. 

So first the Scriptures, second the search and third the Saviour.

The Saviour in the Scriptures

The Jews of course had a very high view of Holy Scripture. The Apostle Paul says that unto the Jews ‘were committed the oracles of God’ (Romans 3.2). They knew the letter of the law, so much so that the scribes counted the number of each Hebrew letter in the Old Testament Scriptures and could tell you how many Alephs there were (42,377), how many Beths (38,218). They knew the oracles of God had been committed to them. They thought their knowledge of the Scriptures was in and of itself life giving. But to them it was a dead letter. Our Lord noted that the Jews believed that in the Scriptures they had eternal life, but that those very Scriptures ‘testify of me’ (John 5.39).

Just having the Scriptures does not give eternal life, but they do show the way to eternal life. The Old Testament Scriptures tell us of our Lord as one who would die for perishing sinners, as the only Mediator between God and men, as the only one through whom the Father can be approached. They speak of His wondrous perfections, His various offices, the sufficiency of His finished work. Apart from the Scriptures He cannot be known, and in them alone He is revealed. It is Jesus Christ who is the key that unlocks the Scriptures.

Consider prophecy for a moment. Genesis 3.15 informs us that He is to be of a seed of a woman—not of a seed of man, but of a woman. Isaiah teaches us that the mother of the great Immanuel is to be a virgin, and the Child thus born is the given Son whose name is Wonderful, Counsellor, Almighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. The Old Testament Scriptures single out Shem (Genesis 9.26–27), then Abraham (Genesis 12.3), then Isaac as he is distinguished from Ishmael (Genesis 17.20–21), and then Jacob, and from among the sons of Jacob the tribe of Judah out of whom shall come forth Shiloh and to whom shall be the gathering of the nations (Genesis 49.10). But the Scriptures are even more definite: the son of Jesse and of David would be the promised great King and Redeemer. 

We might think, as did the wise men from the east, that Jerusalem would be His birthplace. But Micah knows differently and points out Bethlehem Ephratah (Micah 5.2). And Hosea also tells us that He will be taken out of Egypt (Hosea 11.1). Malachi and Isaiah reveal to us that at His coming there will be a voice of one crying in the wilderness to make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isaiah 40.3–4; Malachi 3.1). This God-Man will come as a shepherd (Isaiah 40.10–11; Ezekiel 34.23). He shall not cry nor lift up His voice but will quietly open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf (Isaiah 35.6; 42.7). He will preach good tidings to the meek and liberty to the captives (Isaiah 61.1). But He will be despised and rejected of men (Isaiah 53.3). This Person will be Jerusalem’s King but will come to the city lowly, bringing not military might but salvation (Zechariah 9.9). His own familiar friend will lift up his heel against Him, and that for a mere thirty pieces of silver (Psalm 41.9; Zechariah 11.12). He will be smitten and suffer (Zechariah 13.7; Psalm 22.14, 17; Psalm 34.10).

The Lord Jesus Christ commands us to search the Scriptures. We are not to be content with a cursory reading of them nor with a mere head knowledge of the Scriptures. We need to seek the help of the Holy Spirit that He might open the eyes of our understanding and show us wondrous things out of His law. The command was to the Jews and to you and me: ‘search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me’ (John 5.39). They point to Jesus.

Application

By way of application let me make three points. First of all I have noticed, especially over the last five years, that there is an increasing tendency in Reformed churches for ministers to preach sermons in their entirety from the Old Testament and not once mention the Lord Jesus Christ. Sermons like that would be well received in a Jewish synagogue but should never be tolerated in the church! Sometimes I look at my watch and note how long it takes the preacher to mention the name of Jesus Christ. Sadly there are times I listen right through to the end of the sermon and not once is my Saviour mentioned. 

Consider the journey on the road to Emmaus. We read, ‘And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself’ (Luke 24.27). From page after page of the Old Testament our Lord opens to them the things concerning Himself. Then when meeting with His disciples He reiterated this: ‘all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me’ (v. 44). He opened their minds that they might understand what the Old Testament Scriptures were saying about Him. If you do not see Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures, you are not understanding the Scriptures at all. 

Lest you think it was only to Jewish disciples, think of the eunuch from Ethiopia. He holds in his hand the parchment scrolls of the Old Testament open to Isaiah 53 and asks Philip ‘of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?’ (Acts 8.34). In answer, ‘Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus’ (v. 35).

When the Apostle Paul invited the Jews to his prison home in Rome, we read, ‘he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening’ (Acts 28.23).

My dear preacher friends, let us have that persistence of the Apostle Paul, who when he went to Corinth determined not to know anything among them ‘save Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ (1 Corinthians 2.2). Let us preach to all the unsearchable riches of Christ. Those sermons that you have prepared that never mention Christ: throw them on the fire. Seek the help of the Holy Spirit that you might preach Jesus Christ.

Now a point of application for believers, especially for those who have to endure Christless preaching: tolerate it no more. Emulate those Greeks who went to Philip desiring, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus’ (John 12.21). Believers who face all the trials and tribulations of life, who have to endure in the workplace the blasphemous hatred of this godless generation: they need to learn of Jesus Christ who ‘himself hath suffered being tempted’ and ‘is able to succour them that are tempted’ (Hebrews 2.18). 

Then a final point of application to the Trinitarian Bible Society. I was converted in 1968—fifty-one years ago. Prior to my conversion I had never set a foot inside a place of worship. On 17 December 1965 someone put in my hand a Bible; and I thank God it was an Authorised Version Bible. They challenged me to read the Bible, so I began for the first time in my life to read the Word of God. Day after day I was reading the Word of God and studying it; and one day in April 1968 I was convicted of my sin and of my need of the Saviour. I hadn’t attended church during those three years; that conviction came through the reading of the Word of God applied by the Holy Spirit. I then sought a church where the Word of God was faithfully preached and eventually found one that believed and taught the Word. It was they who introduced me to the work of the Trinitarian Bible Society.

I have been a supporter of TBS for the past fifty-one years and I believe with all my heart that every evangelical church throughout the British Isles should prayerfully and practically support the Trinitarian Bible Society. Though we are encouraged by the numbers gathered here today, yet this building should be packed to the rafters with people supporting the work of the Trinitarian Bible Society. Why then is there so little interest among Christian churches in our land regarding the work of the Trinitarian Bible Society? 

At the back of the Annual Report and every issue of the Quarterly Record and most of our articles you will see the six aims of the Trinitarian Bible Society. The third aim is, ‘To be instrumental in bringing light and life, through the Gospel of Christ, to those who are lost in sin and in the darkness of false religion and unbelief’. The fourth aim is, ‘To uphold the doctrines of reformed Christianity, bearing witness to the equal and eternal deity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, One God in three Persons’. Those two aims are the reason why we take our uncompromising stand for the Authorised Version and for the underlying Hebrew and Greek manuscripts upon which it is based. Modern English Bibles and the majority of foreign language Bibles of the last one hundred and more years are deficient in their doctrine of the Godhead and of the deity of Christ. The teachings of 1 Timothy 3.16 ‘God was manifest in the flesh’, and Revelation 22.13 ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last’ are corrupted or missing from so many modern Bibles. I would encourage you to obtain a copy of The Textual Key to the New Testament which lists more than six hundred such corruptions.

We take our uncompromising stand because we believe that these modern versions are defective, particularly when it comes to the doctrine of the Person and the Work of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Trinity. It is absolutely vital that this Society continues to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints. It is vital and necessary in these dark and fearful days of declension and apostasy that this Society defends the underlying texts of the Authorised Version and exposes the errors of the modern versions. But we must not lose sight of the Society’s third aim; ‘To be instrumental in bringing light and life, through the Gospel of Christ, to those who are lost in sin and in the darkness of false religion and unbelief’.

As I close let us consider the Lord Jesus Christ:

• the chiefest among ten thousand,
• the altogether lovely [One],
• the bright and morning star,
• the Alpha and the Omega,
• the one mediator between God and men,
• the way, the truth, and the life,
• the One in whom the Father was pleased that all fulness should dwell,
• the brightness of His glory,
• the express image of His Person. 

May Jesus Christ have the pre-eminence and be all and in all. Let us resolve as a Society that Jesus Christ shall be at the centre and the circumference of each and of every activity that this Society engages in. Our Lord commands us, ‘search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me’ (John 5.39). Amen.

First published in Quarterly Record 630. Edited for online publication 29 July 2024.

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