Questions Series week 4

October 4, 2023

1. How can we know the Bible is reliable?

2. What proof do we have that Jesus was on the earth?

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Opening Game:

Blitz Ball

Chalk draw on the back.

SONGS:

God of Revival

King of Glory

DEBATE:

Jesus is real and the Bible is reliable.

Jesus is not real and the Bible is not reliable.

GO!

We will present your findings in 10 minutes.

Illustration:

Last year I went to Washington DC for a church conference.

The first day I arrived, I had about 8 hours to explore the city.

One of the first places I wanted to see was the national archives.

This is where the Constitution, Declaration of independence, and Bill of Rights are housed.

I made my way up the stairs to the Rotunda and it was a very dark room.

Lights apparently affect the ink on the pages of the documents.

So as I approached the documents sealed under thick glass… I was amazed at what I saw.

Anyone want to take a guess at what I saw on the pages when I walked up to them?

Honestly…

I saw almost nothing..

It was crazy.

There were enough words on the page to tell you, ok this is what it says it is...

But there wasn’t a single line that I could read start to finish because it was so faded.

I don’t have pictures because you’re not allowed to take your phone out in that room.

I’m not even joking, I think if you take your phone out it is an offense that they can arrest you for. They take it very seriously, as they should.

How many years ago were these documents written?

246 years ago. Right?

1776?

So over the course of only 250 years, these documents that are crucial to our countries founding are fading and will not be readable in another 50 years.

Why does that matter?

Because I want us to look at how the Bible has been preserved.

To do that though, let’s look at one more piece of evidence.

In 1436, Johannes Gutenberg invented the moveable type printing press.

That means, he could move and adjust letters and then evenly distribute ink across a page to get a clean looking printed document from a mechanical process.

Prior to Gutenberg, there were other types of printing presses, but they weren’t really an increase in speed and distribution from hand writing.

In other words, prior to 1436, if you wanted a copy of a document or written manuscript, there wasn’t an easy way to do that.

You had to write it down by hand!

However, after Gutenberg’s invention, one of the first things he did was print 200 copies of the Bible over 3 years in Latin.

On Halloween, 1517, a man started a revolution by posting his 95 Theses on the door of a church in Germany.

His name was Martin Luther and this act essentially started the Protestant Reformation.

Not only that, but because of the printing press, Luther’s words and writings became widely read, published, and distributed in Germany making him really the first best selling author.

Over the next 10 years, 1/3 of all books sold in Germany were written by Luther.

Again, I say all that tonight to say, We need to recognize before 1436, You couldn’t just print a Bible!

The fact that we have the written word today is incredible!

So I want to share with you a few quick facts you can take with you tonight:

How do we know that the Bible is Reliable?

How do you know your brother or sister won’t murder you in the middle of the night tonight?

How do you know that the earth will not spontaneously explode?

How do you know that the moment you leave this place tonight, every car on the road is going to target you and try to wreck your vehicle?

How do you know that your heart is going to keep beating when you wake up tomorrow?

The truth is, any of those things COULD happen.

But you live your life having FAITH that they WON’T happen.

Why?

Is that faith that you have bad?

Hebrews 11:1 “1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

Let’s explore 3 different kinds of faith for a moment.

All of the answers to these questions require faith and there are 3 different kinds of faith:

Unreasonable faith - Believing something for no reason.

Example: believing it’s ok for kids to take puberty blockers that they should be able to make that decision for themselves.

Except we don’t treat kids like that in any other part of society.

Do we let kids fight in the military?

Do we let kids drive? Smoke? drink alcohol? tatoos?

Why do we say kids are too young for those things, but they aren’t too young to make decisions about their bodies that could permanently alter their physical selves later…?

Blind faith - Believing in something without any evidence for it.

My personal favorite illustration.

someone rejects gravity putting that to the test by jumping off our church steeple.

Gravity wins that battle.

Reasonable faith - Believing something because of the evidence.

3 Forms of Evidence:

Bibliographical test:

Look at the literature surrounding scripture and other classical works.

Scripture has 10X the amount of copies of original manuscripts

Dead Sea Scrolls discovered between 1947 and 1956.

Contained scripture that date back to 250 BC.

Roughly 2000 years old.

When we compare the age of Scripture documents that we have compared to other classical works, the comparison really jumps off the page.

Show the chart and then briefly discuss.

External Evidence.

Can we go over 10 things surrounding Jesus life that are bigger than Scripture.

In other words, these are assumed historical facts. Nobody would dispute any of these:

Jesus lived during time of Tiberius Caesar.

He lived a virtuous life.

He was a wonder-worker.

He had a brother named James.

He was acclaimed to be the Messiah.

He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He was crucified on the eve of the Jewish Passover.

Darkness and an Earthquake occurred when he died.

His disciples believed he rose from the dead.

His disciples were willing to die for their belief.

Christianity spread rapidly as far as Rome.

His disciples denied the Roman gods and worshiped Jesus as God.

All of these 12 statements are things you can read about outside of Scripture.

As you look at these at face value, Any historian worth 2 cents would agree that it would be unreasonable to conclude Jesus did not exist.

2 other external Evidences:

Micah 5:2 “2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.””

Now that’s an internal Biblical verse, but we also know that this Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

That’s one of hundred’s of prophecies in Scripture.

Some have come true, some are still yet to come.

Lastly, no archeological discovery has ever contradicted with Scripture. Never… not once.

There might be questions that arise, but ALWAYS upon further investigation or discovery, the Bible proves accurate.

3. FInally, the 3rd form of evidence is the Internal Evidence.

What does Scripture itself say?

The Bible was written over 1500 years by 45 different authors in 3 different languages.

2 Timothy 3:14–17 “14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Final conclusion:

To disregard the Bible as inaccurate would be to reject the one manuscript on earth that has the most evidence around it that it is true.

And folks, that just doesn’t make sense to reject.

By Default, Jesus is who He said He was.

We have an abundance of evidence to support