10 Reasons Why We Believe the Bible is the Word of God - Part 2
I. INTRODUCTION
A. I WANT TO BEGIN THIS MORNING by reading the first 4 verses of Jude’s epistle...
JUD 1:1 Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, ¶ To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ:
JUD 1:2 May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.
JUD 1:3 ¶ Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
JUD 1:4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
I BELIEVE THAT WE’RE LIVING in the last days of the last days...
I BELIEVE THAT WE’RE LIVING in that very specific time period that Jude is referring to in his letter...
MAKING HIS COMMAND in V3 perhaps more relevant to us than to any other generation...
I felt the necessity (Jude says... I sensed an urgency...) to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
THE WORD OF GOD is under attack in our day; we’ve already seen it, and I believe we’re going to see it even more in the days ahead...
AND SO I FELT IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE to begin the new year with an affirmation of what we believe about the Word of God and why we believe that...
II. BODY
LAST WEEK WE BEGAN working down through 10 reasons why we believe the Bible is the Word of God...
WE MADE IT THROUGH the first 3 with 7 more to go...
A. REASON #1 was the testimony of Scripture itself...
IF THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD we would expect it to make that claim about itself, and it does...
IN MANY PLACES THE BIBLE ITSELF claims to be the Word of God...
AND WE LOOKED AT SOME OF THOSE CLAIMS last week...
BY ITSELF, this reason would certainly not be enough to make us believe it, but it is a necessary starting point...
AND WE DO HAVE MUCH MORE evidence to substantiate this claim that the Bible makes about itself...
B. REASON #2 is the testimony of Christ...
AS YOU WOULD SEEK AN ANSWER to the question, “Is the Bible the Word of God?”...
IT WOULD BE ONLY REASONABLE to find out what Jesus Christ thinks about that...
AFTER ALL, He is the main character and central theme of the Bible...
WHAT IS HIS PERSPECTIVE ON THIS SUBJECT...?
THROUGHOUT THE NT Jesus Christ referred to the Bible as the “Word of God”, as “Scripture”, and as the “Commandments of God”...
HE REFERRED to the people and events of the OT as historical facts...
HE HELD PEOPLE responsible for what was written in Scripture...
AND HE OFTEN used the Scriptures as conclusive evidence in answering His critics...
3 TIMES, while being tempted by the devil in the wilderness, Jesus said, “it is written”...
AND THEN QUOTED SCRIPTURE to silence and rebuke him...
JESUS CHRIST gives clear testimony to the fact that the Bible is the Word of God...
C. AND THEN REASON #3 is the testimony of the writers...
IT’S VERY CLEAR THAT THE WRITERS knew they were penning the Word of God...
AND WE LOOKED at some of the supporting evidence for that last week...
D. THIS MORNING brings us to reason #4 as to why we believe the Bible is the Word of God...
AND THAT IS THE BIBLE’S TEXTUAL UNITY...
THIS IS REALLY AN AMAZING THING and something that provides us with very strong evidence that the Bible is the Word of God...
AND LET ME BEGIN to build this case by talking about the writings of man...
THE WRITINGS OF MAN have always been marked by disunity and contradiction...
IF 3 MEN WERE TO WRITE A BOOK on the same subject, you can be sure that those books would be filled with contradictions and glaring discrepancies in philosophy...
YOU CAN EVEN SEE THIS in single books that were written by 2 or more authors...
AND THEN IN ADDITION to the differences among various authors and their perspectives, there is time that always results in contradictions...
HOW MANY TIMES have you seen a best-selling book come out, written by a so-called expert on this subject or that subject...
ONLY TO SEE A NEW EXPERT come along 5 or 10 years later to write a new book on the same subject that contradicts everything the former expert said about it in his book...
THAT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME...!
JOSH MCDOWELL, a well-known apologist for Christianity, was approached one time by a salesman for the “Great Books of the Western World” series, a set that includes the writings of all the leading thinkers throughout the history of Western man...
JOSH CHALLENGED THE MAN to take 10 of the authors from the same walk of life, the same time period, the same country, and the same language and ask them about one basic subject...
WOULD THEY AGREE, Josh asked...?
ARE YOU KIDDING, the salesman replied, you would have a conglomeration...!
BUT NOW LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT A BOOK that was written by far more than 10 authors that is not a conglomeration...
THOSE WHO STUDY THE BIBLE are continually amazed at its unity and consistency of doctrine, especially given the circumstances by which it was written...
THE BIBLE WAS NOT WRITTEN by just 10 different authors, it was written by 40 different authors...
AND THE WRITERS were not all contemporaries; these 40 different authors penned the various books of the Bible over a span of some 1600 years...
THAT’S A LONG TIME; that represents a tremendous amount of change in culture and philosophy...
AND YET THE BIBLE is one book with one consistent theme and no contradictions in its teachings...
I SHOULD ALSO MENTION to you that the Bible was written in 3 different languages; Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic...
AND IT WAS WRITTEN on 3 different continents; Asia, Africa, and Europe...
THERE WAS A SPAN OF 400 YEARS between the penning of the Old and New Testaments, what theologians refer to as the silent years...
AND AS FAR AS THESE 40 DIFFERENT WRITERS are concerned, they were all very different from one another, they came from many different and varied walks of life...
JEREMIAH was a prophet, Zechariah was a priest, Amos was a shepherd, David was a king, Nehemiah was a servant, Luke was a doctor, Matthew a tax collector, and Paul a Pharisee...
AGAIN LET ME SAY that in spite of this incredible diversity, the Bible is one unified book that agrees in doctrine, details of prophecy, what it says about Jesus Christ, and its offer of rescue to mankind...
FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION the Bible tells a single story: the rescue of mankind from sin through the death of Jesus Christ...
THE OLD TESTAMENT presents Him as the hope of mankind; the New Testament shows Him to be the fulfillment of that hope...
THE POINT TO BE MADE HERE is simple and yet very profound...
NO OTHER BOOK written by this many authors over this span of time can demonstrate the incredible unity that we have in the 66 books that make up the one Bible...
AND I WANT TO SUBMIT TO YOU that this provides us with very strong evidence to support the Bible’s claim, Christ’s claim, and the writers’ claim that this book is the Word of God...
E. LET’S GO ON TO A FIFTH REASON why we believe the Bible is the Word of God...
AND THAT’S ITS MIRACULOUS PRESERVATION...
IF GOD CHOSE TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO MAN on the pages of a book, as the Bible itself, Christ, and the writers claim that He did...
THEN WE WOULD ALSO EXPECT HIM to preserve that book for us down through the ages so that we could reap its benefits...
WHAT GOOD WOULD IT DO for God to reveal His truth to man in a book if men didn’t have access to that book...?
WELL, WE DO HAVE ACCESS TO THAT BOOK because God has promised to preserve it for us...
AND LET ME BEGIN ON THIS SUBJECT now, by showing you some of the verses where that promise is made and then we’ll talk more specifically about how He has fulfilled that promise...
GOD SAID THROUGH THE PROPHET ISAIAH in Isa 40:8...
ISA 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.
A VERSE, by the way, that Peter quotes in his NT epistle... (1Pet 1:24-25)
IN ISA 59:21 IT SAYS THIS...
ISA 59:21 "As for Me, this is My covenant with them," says the Lord: "My Spirit which is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring's offspring," says the Lord, "from now and forever."
ANOTHER SUCH PROMISE comes in Psa 12:6-7...
PSA 12:6 The words of the Lord are pure words; As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.
PSA 12:7 You, O Lord, will keep them; You will preserve him from this generation forever.
IN THE NT it says this in Matt 5:18...
MAT 5:18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
AND THEN MATT 24:35...
MAT 24:35 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.
IT’S VERY CLEAR that the God who revealed His truth on the pages of a book also promised to preserve those words...
AND HE HAS, but not exactly in the way that we might have expected Him to...
WE WOULD PROBABLY EXPECT God to fulfill this promise by somehow preserving the original documents that were penned by Moses and Isaiah and Matthew and Mark and Peter and John...
BUT HE DIDN’T DO IT THAT WAY...
IN FACT, none of the original manuscripts written by any of the 40 biblical authors are even in existence today...
WE HAVE NONE OF THEM, not a single one...
BUT WE DO HAVE A MULTITUDE OF COPIES and copies of copies...
WHICH, OF COURSE, is something that raises the eyebrows of the critics...
WHEN A SCRIBE would copy a large document by hand, there was great potential for errors...
AND SO WHAT THEY WOULD DO is count the individual letters on the original document and compare it with the copy...
(Very similar to the way computers check documents for accuracy today...)
IF THERE WAS A DISCREPANCY they would go back and try to find it... (They were meticulous in their work...)
TEXTUAL EXPERTS today would tell us that transcriptional errors in the OT are extremely rare...
AND WHERE THEY ARE FOUND, they are very trivial in nature, usually spelling issues...
THE SAME CAN BE SAID for the NT...
THERE ARE WELL OVER 5000 copies of NT texts available to us today...
AND ONCE AGAIN, most variations are trivial having to do with spelling...
CERTAINLY THERE ARE SOME disputed portions of the text; a word or two or even a line or two in one manuscript that is not in another, and so forth...
TEXTUAL CRITICS AND SCHOLARS wrestle with these kinds of issues...
BUT EVEN THE ARGUING CRITICS are quick to remind us that the textual variations they recognize and wrestle with effect no accepted doctrine of our Christian faith...
NO MAJOR DOCTRINE of the Christian faith is at stake over these variations, or even a minor doctrine for that matter...
IF YOU’VE DONE ANY READING at all on this subject of Bible translation and the variants in the manuscripts and so forth, you know that it’s a huge and very complex subject...
IT’S A SUBJECT that goes way beyond the scope of this study and a subject that goes way beyond my capability...
ALL I CAN DO is tell you what the textual experts say...
AND WHAT THE TEXTUAL EXPERTS SAY is that the Bibles we hold in our hands were translated from texts that for all practical purposes are the same as the originals...
AND I JUST WANT TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING before we leave this subject that I think will even further affirm our confidence in referring to these copies of the original manuscripts as the Word of God...
WHEN PAUL SAID TO TIMOTHY in 2Tim 3:15...
that from childhood you have known the sacred writings
IT SHOULD BE NOTED that the only “sacred writings” that would have been available to Timothy as he grew up would have been copies and not the original manuscripts...
YET THESE COPIES that were known to Timothy from his childhood are the very ones that Paul refers to in this text as being authoritative, for his correction, and instruction in the teachings of God...
WE SEE HERE then that, according to Paul, a quality of “inspiredness” had adhered to the copies Timothy grew up with...
AND THE CONTINUING VALUE of this verse for the church then is, of course, that what we possess is still fully authoritative and is still our infallible guide into God’s truths...
I COULD SHOW YOU MANY EXAMPLES of this; I’ll just show you one more...
JESUS SAID to the Jewish leaders in John 10:35 that the Scripture cannot be broken...
WHAT SCRIPTURE is He talking about that has such authority and permanence...?
THE ONLY SCRIPTURE available to Jesus and these Jewish scholars would have been copies of the originals...
AND ONCE AGAIN let me say that God has miraculously preserved His Written Word for us down through the centuries...
ONE MORE PROOF that it is indeed what it claims to be; the Word of God...
F. REASON #6...
WE BELIEVE THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD because of its historical accuracy...
THE BIBLE CLAIMS to present an accurate record of the real history of man...
BOTH THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS are filled with references to specific people, places, and events...
AND CERTAINLY, if the Bible is wrong with regard to history, then we would be justified in questioning its accuracy in other areas...
AND IT’S PRECISELY ON THOSE HISTORICAL GROUNDS that many have questioned the Bible’s accuracy...
AND SOME OF THEM have seemed to have valid arguments, at least for a while...
FOR EXAMPLE, the OT mentions some 50 times a people known as the Hitites...
BUT FOR CENTURIES, those who studied the ancient world questioned the Bible because they had discovered no evidence of such a people...
THAT IS UNTIL 1906 when archaeologists uncovered the Hittite capital some 90 miles east of the capital of Turkey...
AS TIME GOES ON, the questions of the critics are being answered by reliable scholarship and the findings of the archaeologist’s spade...
NELSON GLUECK, a Jewish archaeologist, said, “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference”...
THE NT RECORD is also supported by research and discovery...
THE GOSPEL OF LUKE and the book of Acts (both written by Luke) have gained the respect of scholars who have investigated and confirmed their numerous references to people and places in the Jewish and Roman worlds...
SIR WILLIAM RAMSEY, for example, one of the greatest archaeologists to ever live, demonstrated that Luke made no mistakes in references to 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands...
JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY is another scholar who has written much on this subject of biblical history...
HE SAID, AND I QUOTE...
What then, does a historian know about Jesus Christ? He knows, first and foremost, that the New Testament documents can be relied upon to give an accurate portrait of Him. And he knows that this portrait cannot be rationalized away by wishful thinking, philosophical presuppositionalism, or literary maneuvering...
MUCH MORE COULD BE SAID on this subject and many more proofs could be cited to prove the Bible’s historical accuracy...
BUT WE’RE GOING TO MOVE ON and consider yet one more reason this morning as to why we believe the Bible is the Word of God...
G. AND THAT IS ITS SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY...
THE BIBLE IS NOT INTENDED to be a science textbook and often uses figures of speech to describe facets of life that science would explain in different terms...
FOR EXAMPLE, we just recently came across this statement in Ecc 1:5...
ECC 1:5 Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; And hastening to its place it rises there again.
BIBLE CRITICS have cited this verse as an example of a scientific error...
IT’S NOT THE SUN THAT RISES AND SETS, they say, and if God were really the Author of this book He would know that...
WELL, GOD DOES KNOW THAT and this is clearly not meant to be a scientific statement, it’s just a figure of speech that men have used for centuries to describe this event in layman’s terms...
AND EVEN SCIENTISTS will refer to a beautiful sunrise or sunset when they’re not writing a paper for a professional journal...
ANOTHER SIMILAR EXAMPLE would be the Bible’s mention in Isa 11:12 and twice in the book of Revelation of the four corners of the earth...
IS THAT A SCIENTIFIC BLUNDER in the Bible; is the Bible teaching a square, flat earth with four corners...?
NO, ONCE AGAIN, it’s just using terminology that reflects commonly used figures of speech...
THIS WHOLE IDEA of a flat earth is an interesting one though...
MOST PEOPLE really did believe the earth was flat all the way up to 1492 and Columbus’s voyage...
BUT THE OT that was written long before that, speaks in Isa 40:22, of Him...
who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
THE HEBREW WORD for “circle” there means round or sphere...
SOME 2200 YEARS before man figured it out, Isaiah had already proclaimed that the earth was a circle...
HOW DID ISAIAH KNOW THAT...?
ISAIAH DIDN’T KNOW THAT; he was simply penning a word that came from God...!
JOB IS ANOTHER ancient who made a correct scientific statement about the earth long before any man could have understood it...
HE SAID IN JOB 26:7...
JOB 26:7 "He stretches out the north over empty space And hangs the earth on nothing.
IN THE 16TH CENTURY English scientist William Harvey discovered how the human circulatory system works...
BUT MANY CENTURIES earlier the book of Leviticus had already pronounced in Lev 17:11 that...
the life of the flesh is in the blood,
AGAIN, THERE IS MUCH MORE that could be said about this subject of the Bible and science and lots of reading that you could do if you wanted to...
BUT WHEN IT’S ALL SAID AND DONE, the conclusions will be the same...
WHAT’S BEEN PROVEN over and over again is that in the final analysis, when the Bible is interpreted correctly and science has arrived at proven conclusions, they will be in perfect agreement...
AND THAT SHOULDN’T SURPRISE US AT ALL...
BECAUSE THE SAME GOD who created the universe and set in motion the laws that govern our world is the same God who inspired the Bible...
THE VERY AUTHOR of science is the also the Author of this inspired book...!
III. CONCLUSION
A. AND THAT’S WHERE WE’RE GOING TO STOP for this morning...
WHY DO WE BELIEVE the Bible is the Word of God...?
7 REASONS DOWN and 3 to go...
1. THERE IS THE TESTIMONY OF THE BIBLE ITSELF...
2. THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST...
3. THE TESTIMONY OF THE WRITERS...
4. THERE IS AN INCREDIBLE UNITY to the Bible’s message and teachings even though it was written by 40 different authors over a span of some 1600 years...
5. FIFTHLY, WE HAVE THE BIBLE’S miraculous preservation...
6. COUPLED WITH ITS PROVEN HISTORICAL...
7. AND SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY...
8. NEXT WEEK WE’LL PICK UP with one of the most significant and fascinating proofs that the Bible is the Word of God...
AND THAT IS ITS ACCURACY in fulfilled prophecy...