Is the Bible Reliable and True?

Speaker 1 0:30

Well , good morning . Thank you so much for having me First service . I was surprised by the story that Larry shared with you . I had a much nicer story , a different experience , when Larry came down for the residency down in Southern California For me . I live in SoCal and what I remember is that Larry rented a convertible and drove me around in it , and I think it's the only time I've lived in Southern California where I've gotten to ride around in a convertible enjoying the weather . But I'm glad I was formational for him . I'm the dean of the Pacific Christian College at Hope International University . I had the privilege of teaching Larry .

Speaker 1 1:06

I am a big believer in Christian higher education , hopes here to equip both people at the undergraduate level as well as the graduate level for ministry , and I have a booth outside if you'd like to know more information about our school . But really I want to thank you as a community that you gave Pastor Larry space to be able to further his education . I think it's important for us to be lifelong learners , both formally and informally , and when we do that , particularly as leaders , we can only go as far as we've gone ourselves , and so thank you for the ways that you've invested in him . I hope it's been ways that you've seen that investment poured back into your own lives . Now I do have a bit of a challenge today , asking that question Is the Bible reliable , is it true ? And that's a big question For me . It actually boils down to the question why bother ? So what ? If I'm going to build my life of faith on God's word , I need to know that it's reliable , that it's true . Otherwise I might as well build it on something else . This is a foundational question for me when it comes to my faith and hopefully I'm able to provide you some answers that will help you in conversations with each other but , more importantly , in your own life .

Speaker 1 2:20

I'm reminded of a quote by one of my friends on Facebook earlier this year , and at Facebook my friend John , who's also a teacher at APU , said the thing about teaching and rehearsing it's not what should I do , but what do I leave out . And honestly , it's going to feel like a fire hose already this morning . But I am leaving so much out . There are so many details , so many rabbit trails that we could go down that we're just not going to have time . You're not going to become experts in why the Bible is truly reliable from a short sermon on a Sunday afternoon .

Speaker 1 2:55

However , if this is something that you are passionate about , this is something you're interested in , I'm going to give you resources throughout the message . I would encourage you in those moments take out your cell phone , take some pictures so that you have these resources . The first one is a guy named Michael Byrd and he has this book called Seven Things I Wish Every Christian Knew About the Bible , and it's a great resource . He's going to talk in greater detail about a lot of things that I'm going to talk to you about this morning . The second book it's by Dan Kimball and he says how not to read the Bible , and he's also got a website , the Regeneration Project , which does a lot of apologetics , and so he takes on , I think , some of the newer questions that people ask about the Bible , and these are just two great resources that will get you just a little further along if you want to have something on your bookshelf for your own sake , or if you have a friend in those kind of conversations , and so I hope that this is up , because it's already a daunting enough task .

Speaker 1 3:51

I thought , well , what can I do to make my job harder ? And I thought maybe what I'll do is I'll build a piece of furniture from Ikea . Anybody here like to build stuff from Ikea ? How many of you hate building stuff from Ikea ? And I guess it's the worst . All right , yeah , so I grew up doing construction , so I don't mind building stuff . I don't mind doing it , but honestly , building in front of you could be a whole new task .

Speaker 1 4:16

One of the things I learned this is a public service announcement is apparently the TSA . I flew up here from Southern California . The TAA does not allow you to TSA to have screwdrivers longer than seven inches , and so my bag got pulled out and my screwdriver got confiscated . So I have this much smaller screwdriver I bought from O'Reilly's to help put this thing together . So I did go through screening . I promise you that I'm a safe person and that I will take a smaller screwdriver on the plane next time for you as well .

Speaker 1 4:49

But what I have here this is a visual illustration for us is a stool , and really we're going to have three legs of the stool as we talk about what it means for the Bible to be trustworthy and true , and the first one that I want to talk to you about is the testimony of scripture . What does the Bible actually say about itself when it comes to its authority ? And here I want us to look at 2 Peter 3 , verses 16 and 17 . And this is the question how can we trust its testimony ? And here , 2 Timothy 3 , 16 , it says all scripture is God breathed and it's useful for teaching , rebuking , correcting and training in righteousness For 17 , so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work . So this is what the Bible says about itself . Now Paul is writing to Timothy , and he's not talking about the entire Bible at this point , because the entire Bible hadn't been written . He's talking about the Old Testament , and Paul wants to tell us how the Old Testament has been

Understanding the Bible's Structure and Inspiration

Speaker 1 5:52

inspired .

Speaker 1 5:53

This is the Bible of the early church , and there's three parts to the Old Testament that we see . The first part is the law . These are the first five books in your Bible . They're the books that are attributed to Moses , so it's Genesis , exodus , leviticus , numbers and Deuteronomy . The second are the prophets , so you can think of people like Isaiah , jeremiah , ezekiel . But here's what's fascinating For the Jewish understanding of prophets they also included books like Joshua , judges First and Second , samuel , first and Second Kings .

Speaker 1 6:25

You see , the Jewish people have a slightly different understanding of prophecy than we often think about . For us , prophecy is so often about future telling right . The Jewish concept of prophecy is that it's about God speaking His truth into our lives today as well as the future , but also that God speaks His truth about the past . Prophecy is about God's divine insight into the human experience , and God provides insights both in our past as well as our present as well as the future . And so you have this second category of the prophets . The third category are the writings , and this is the catch . All other categories this is the Psalms , this is Proverbs , ecclesiastes , and so there's just anything that wasn't in those first two categories falls into the third category .

Speaker 1 7:12

Jesus himself talks about these three categories in Luke 24 , 44 . Now this is a story about Jesus after he's been resurrected . He's walking on a road with his disciples , and this is what Jesus says to them in Luke 24 , 44 . He says to them this is what I've told you while I was still with you . Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses , the prophets and the Psalms . So you get these three categories . He just says Psalms . He doesn't say the whole writings . But that's that third category .

Speaker 1 7:43

But what I want you to see is that when Jesus walks through scripture with his disciples , he says everything must be fulfilled . That is written about me , that the Old Testament . It has stories that are related to the life and times of ancient Israel . But , more importantly , the Old Testament scriptures point to Jesus , and when we read our Old Testament we should be expectant to find Jesus in the Old Testament . And so Jesus , paul , the early Christians , when they had their scriptures , they thought of the Old Testament . They thought of this as being inspired by God . But you might say , well , what does inspiration mean ?

Speaker 1 8:20

And here I want to turn to 2nd Peter , chapter one , verses 20 and 21 . This is what Peter says . He says , above all , you must understand that no prophecy of scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation of things , for prophecy never had its origins in the human will . But prophets , though human , spoke from God as if they were carried along by the Holy Spirit . The idea in this passage is that the Bible is God's revelation using human words . The Bible is God's revelation using human words . See , god used the prophet . It's not this dictation where people are just possessed by God's spirit and they just start writing and transcribing down the words of God . No , he's using people , the prophet's personality , the author's personality , speaking at times and circumstances . I like to think of it this way the Bible was not written to us , but is written for us . The Bible is not written to us , but is written for us . This principle right here helps so much when it comes to the authority of God's word , because I think often we forget this part . We think that God spoke it . I believe it and it's this direct revelation .

Speaker 1 9:35

We need to remember that God spoke to people in historical times and circumstances , dealing with specific circumstances . That doesn't mean that there's not general principles in scripture . So think of things like I don't know , don't murder people , don't commit adultery , don't steal stuff . If you're in court , don't lie , honor your parents . This is where you like the New Testament , my kids . I got a high schooler so I said Paul quotes that honor your parents . But parents , you guys go like this . He says don't exasperate your kids . That's Ephesians . Take that one . They're going to remember something . These are timeless principles , no matter what . We know that . These are things that we can live by . We should always not murder people , we should always not commit adultery . But there's other parts of the Bible that are clear in their circumstances .

Speaker 1 10:33

So Paul talks to Timothy and in First Timothy he says women should not wear braided hair , should not wear gold and shouldn't wear pearls . Any of you in here got gold on today wedding rings maybe or we got braided hair , got some pearls I don't think we're really much of a pearl culture as much anymore , but maybe a few pearls . I'm happy to have a pastor who talked about a culture of generosity . Let me be generous with you this morning . If you have any jewelry that's gold or pearls or valuables , I'll be out in the lobby . I'm happy to take those off your hands for you , because I'm concerned about your souls and I don't want you to be sinning . This morning . I was like that's weird .

Speaker 1 11:17

Well , in Paul's day , in culture these were all signs of wealth and status , and women were coming to the Ephesian churches all dressed up to show that they were the ones that were the people with money versus everybody else who weren't , and it was a way to show status and privilege in the church and privileging themselves over against other people in the church . This isn't a problem we have today . It is . We have all sorts of things that come with social status , with class . We find there's problems in terms of race and ethnicity .

Speaker 1 11:52

But we have ways to divide ourselves . We're really good at it , despite Jesus' one main prayer may we be unified . Instead , we go about dividing ourselves and the principle that Paul's getting at don't divide yourselves , particularly by what you wear . If you've ever had those people like , ooh , I wish they weren't wearing that to church today , I don't think I want to talk to that person . What we wear matters , and how we respond to people matters , and Paul gives that principle . We need to be a unified body , that we're coming together , that we're thoughtful with each other . Now , this doesn't mean that now we're the police outside checking for people who wear flip-flops to church or whatnot . That's the other side of things , but we should be mindful .

Speaker 1 12:35

Another one is Paul says greet one another with a holy kiss . Can you imagine that ? What kind of HR problem we'd have ? Oh , you go to the kids' scene , church , yeah . But instead the principle is treat each other like family , because that's what the ancient New Year's culture did If you were a family , you would kiss each other on the cheek . How are we treating one another as family that time out there by the coffee and tea and waters , your time as you hang out in the lobby , when you see people and connect to people . That's living by the biblical values and principles behind that passage .

Speaker 1 13:08

But we need to remember that the Bible was not written to us , but it was written for us . Going on to talk about this idea , I said you know the Old Testament that's inspired by God . Here we see that it's God's revelation using human words . But what about the New Testament ? What about those other 27 books ? Does the Bible say anything about those books ? It does Later in 2 Peter , verse 3 , chapter 3 , verse 15 says Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation .

Speaker 1 13:38

Just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him . So this is acknowledging that Paul's writings are on the same level of Scripture . He writes the same way in all his letters , speaking in them of these matters . His letters contain some things that are hard to understand , which ignorant , unstable people distort as they do with other Scriptures to their own destruction . Anyone ever find the Bible hard to understand , right ? I'm thankful for this passage . I'm a Pauline scholar , so this gives me in business , right , because I write books and teach classes about it Because , honestly , scripture is hard to understand sometimes . What I love about this passage is it notes it's not just that it's hard to understand , but ignorant and unstable people distort the Scriptures .

Speaker 1 14:22

We have a responsibility to be studying God's Word deeply and intently , but doing so with people who are experts in what the Bible has to say . This is why investing in Pastor Larry's education in the way that you have helps equip you as a congregation . This is why getting together in small groups and having studies that are written by people that have deeply studied God's Word is so important , because if we don't , we see all sorts of distortions . It's not enough to go to a church where a pastor gives proof texts after proof texts , where they're deciding the Bible for whatever their message is on a Sunday morning and lots of churches in America do this is that people have just messages and they tag on the Word of God and we think , oh well , it must be God speaking , because I had a few verses that were sprinkled through this message . That's not a biblical message . Biblical messages ask what is God saying and speaking in our lives today and applying it directly , and so we have to be careful of this .

Speaker 1 15:20

So Paul's letters are an example of the acceptance of the New Testament . What happens in the New Testament is it takes about 300 years for the church overall to decide which books are in and which are out , but for the New Testament to be inspired , there's three parts of the New Testament that we want to look at . There's three categories . There's the Gospels , which are the writings around the life and teachings of Jesus that were authoritative . There's Paul's 13 letters which , by the way , they're arranged longest to shortest , if you didn't know that they're not arranged chronologically . And then the third group is the other writings . This is books by Peter and James and John . So you ask well , how did the church decide which books were in and which were out ? They have three criteria that they thought of . The three criteria At first was age .

Speaker 1 16:06

A book had to be old enough . It had to be close to the time of Jesus and the early apostles . So we have , for example , a book by Justin Martyr called His Apologies . This was an early defense of the Christian faith . He writes them in the 150s . They're great books , but they don't make it into the New Testament because they're not old enough .

Speaker 1 16:25

A second criteria is they had to be apostolic . They had to be written by people that were associated with Jesus and the early apostles , and so you have the letters of Paul , you have the letters of Peter and James and Jude , but you also have things like the Gospel of Mark . He wasn't a disciple but he was associated with Peter or Luke , who was associated with Paul , and so there had to be some sort of apostolic connection . We have books like a book called the Didache , which has some great teachings . That has the Ten Commandments , has instructions on baptism . It has all sorts of good teaching . It's old , it's written in the 50s , but it didn't make it into your Bible because it didn't have an apostolic connection . The third is agreement . It has to agree with the other teachings . They can't be heretical . It's the big fancy word . It had to be orthodox . Those big words for us . They had to agree with the other writings of the New Testament .

Speaker 1 17:16

There's actually lots of writings from this time . I know we have the sense that maybe it was only the 27 when we were lucky to have them . You can actually find all the writings I'm talking about . Go to the internet . There's a book called earlychristianwritingscom and has lots of these things . It's not hard to find these writings , but let me give you an example of agreement for gospel stories .

Speaker 1 17:36

There's a book called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas , and Thomas is fascinating because it asks the question what does it mean for Jesus to be fully God and fully toddler ? What does toddler Jesus look like ? So he has cute stories , like he makes clay pigeons , animates them , sends them off , and they're alive . Or Joseph cuts a board for a bed . He doesn't know the adage of measure twice cut once . He doesn't do that . He cuts the board too short . Hey , jesus , come over here and lengthen the board . If I was Joseph I would have just asked him to make the bed in the first place . I don't know , but he didn't those kind of cool stories .

Speaker 1 18:14

But we also have stories like a kid bumping into Jesus and him being mad , so he kills him . Like what Jesus killed a kid for running into him . It's awesome . Later on , you guys , people get in trouble , brothers and sisters , all that stuff . So this kid's playing on the roof with Jesus . He falls off the roof , dies . Jesus has already murdered another kid . So like Jesus is killing kids all over the place . Horror stories , halloween time . Jesus , I didn't kill this guy , what are you talking about ? So he goes and he raises the kid from the dead , just so he can ask him did I murder you ? Because , like no , it's like . See , I told you those kind of stories didn't make it in your Bible . Fully God , fully toddler , I'm telling you there's a lot of stuff out there that didn't make it .

Speaker 1 18:55

Because of this criteria of agreement , the church was very responsible with this selection of the 27 books that they recognized were divine revelation , god's revelation using human words . Scripture is trustworthy because it is the divine revelation of God . Scripture is trustworthy because it's the divine revelation of God . Now , if you wanna dig into this topic more , I have a resource for you In Te Right . Tom Right has a book called Surprise by Scripture , and this is a great book . If you wanna dig into this and some of the nature of Scripture , right does a great job for us

Bible Translations and Trustworthiness

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Speaker 1 19:33

The second leg of the stool , though , is we need to talk about the texts . Why can we trust its texts ? You can notice that they're all gonna be teased . My last name is Tony , so all the points in sermeness fashion , all have a T to them . So we're gonna talk about why can we trust this text , and here I wanna pull up a couple of examples for us .

Speaker 1 20:01

So let's look first at this slide here that has some Hebrew on it . The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and this says Barasheeth , barah , elohim et ha-shemim . Why et ha-arets ? Anybody know what that says ? Anyone speak Hebrew here ? It says in the beginning , god created the heavens and the earth . This is the first verse in the Bible . Let me give an example from the New Testament . The New Testament is written in Greek . In Greek , anybody recognize this verse . This is John 3.16 . For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life .

Speaker 1 21:07

These slides are helpful for us because they point out a couple of things . One we really need translators , don't we ? To help us , we need experts who know Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek . But we also see that there's an importance of understanding the text itself of those original languages . So first let's talk about translation . There's three main types of translation out there . The first is word-for-word translation . This is the New American Standard Version , the English Standard Version , the King James , our examples of that . We have others that are more thought for thought . This is the New Revised Standard Version , the NIV , and then we have paraphrases like the New Living Translation , the message I get asked all the time Dr Tony , what's the best translation ?

Speaker 1 21:58

The one you use , plain and simple , the one you read . If we're honest I'm a Bible scholar it's hard sometimes to pick up my Bible and read it . Sometimes it's boring , sometimes it's offensive , sometimes I'm lazy . There's all sorts of reasons that I can tell you why I don't read the Bible , but I'll tell you what when I do , god's Word does amazing things in my life when I read it and when I live by it . So I just encourage you , whatever translation , just use it . If you want to get into further study , then I think the word for word and thought for thought translations are very helpful . They're good translations and even comparing translations can be very helpful . It can also be really helpful if you're stuck in one translation , just to start reading a different one . What's great is you have things like all sorts of Bible apps out there , like U-Version , that you can pick this stuff up . There's no reason not to be looking at a bunch of things . You're looking at a bunch of different translations . It can be very helpful .

Speaker 1 22:59

What's cool about the Bible is the Bible embraces and encourages translation . The Bible embraces , encourage translation . What do I mean by that ? A lot of Bibles have red letter editions where that's the words of Jesus , right ? Well , jesus spoke Aramaic in the first century , but the Bible , the New Testament , is not written in Aramaic , it's written in Greek . Why wouldn't they preserve Jesus' Aramaic teachings ? Because in the first century , the language that most people spoke was Greek and the church was a missionary church . They wanted to get Jesus' words out there for everybody to be able to understand , and so , rather than having some obscure language than only a few people knew , they very quickly translated Jesus' words into Greek so that they could share God's word with as many people as possible , which is very cool . God doesn't need you to learn Hebrew , aramaic or Greek to speak to you today . He just needs you to pick up your Bible .

Speaker 1 24:04

Part of the mission of the church , even today , is we should be helping give to organizations like Wycliffe Bible Translators , because there are still people out there that do not have the Bible in their own language , and yet we have lots of translations . So giving translations . It's also important for us to continue to talk in ways that future generations understand what God's word's about that we need to be constantly updating translations because language changes and we want to be people that adapt God's word for the current culture and the current times . New translations are always good and most translations they continue to update themselves on a regular basis In light of language . The second point that these slides show up is that we need to talk about is the text itself .

Speaker 1 24:51

Now for our Bibles . We actually have lots of copies of the Bible . In fact , we have over 2,000 copies of the Old Testament and over 5,500 copies of the New Testament . We have lots and lots . These are ancient copies . We have more . If you were to count up what you have in your pews today . Right , there's lots of , but ancient manuscripts .

Speaker 1 25:12

Now for the Old Testament , and you think about copying . If you've ever copied anything down by hand , you know that it's easy to make mistakes , isn't it ? We skip letters , sometimes we skip words . We'll even skip entire lines when it comes to copying . Sometimes , when we copy things with the Bible , they'd say , oh , I don't know what that word means anymore . Well , let's put in a word that everybody knows , let's update , or maybe oh , that's kind of an obscure passage . We better add some information to that passage so that people understand it , or maybe like oh , there's something missing here . So we're gonna actually include a whole bunch of stuff in the Bible . Because we have so many copies , we're able to weed out when those mistakes happen .

Speaker 1 25:57

What's cool with the Old Testament in particular is that the Old Testament was copied by professional scribes for about 500 years and these scribes are called maserats , and the maserats would do things like they would count up to the center word in a scroll , count up to the center letter in the scroll , to make sure that they had carefully copied the scrolls . In Hebrew , the oldest maseratic text that we have , full text , is the Codex Leningrad from about 80 , 1,000 . So pretty old , but not as old as maybe you'd want to have , and so that was kind of what we had for a long time . In the 1950s the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered , and when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered it went from 81,000 to our oldest copy to some of our oldest copies are from 250 BC , and now we're able to compare copies of scrolls from 250 BC to copies from 1,000 . And what we've discovered is that there's a great deal of correlation between that . The maseracs actually did a great job with copying their texts , and so we've been able to bump it back by over 1,000 years in terms of how old our copies are and showing the reliability of what they did for their copying practices .

Speaker 1 27:14

For the New Testament it was not copied originally by professional scribes . Once the church became formalized they did have professional scribes , but originally it was just like you and me writing stuff down , and so a lot more mistakes were introduced , but we have over 5,000 copies Now . Originally , the King James version is based on a guy named Deirdis Erasmus . I don't need to remember his name , but he only had seven copies of the New Testament that he can bear , so much so that at the end of Revelation he actually had to backwards translate from Latin to Greek to create his end of Revelation . Since then , we've gone from seven copies to be able to compare over 5,500 copies .

Speaker 1 27:54

Some people ask well , should I use the King James ? It seems like it's our oldest translation . It's fine , but we actually have so many more copies now of the New Testament that we have better manuscripts based on the NIV , the New Revised Standard . It's actually a more . These are more accurate Bibles than the King James and the New King James because we have such a greater pool of manuscripts that we're choosing from , so we've been able to come up with this . Now with the New Testament , scholars estimate that it's probably about 97% accurate .

Speaker 1 28:25

You may be like , oh gosh , that doesn't . I want 100% , dr Tony , only 97% . How can you be sure it's really God's word and what isn't ? Well here I've got an example slide for you . This slide has 100 words . Let's see if you can understand it , but I've included mistakes .

Speaker 1 28:44

Jesus is the world's savior , who ? Oh ? Somebody corrected my slide Between first service and second service . You guys took care of all my typos . Look at that , they're just like the scribes . So let me read what it originally said . That's awesome .

Speaker 1 29:11

Jesus is the world's savior . And it used to say who dead , dead on a cross and there was only one S and rose on the third day , and I dropped the letter Y on it . So it was da . He taught people to love God and their neighbor . We're already getting like the process of . Oh there , it is the process of tech .

Speaker 1 29:36

This is what scholars have to do . You know that didn't make sense , so let's fix it . It made enough sense that they were able to correct me . This is what scholars do when it comes to your Bible that we base our beliefs on the clear texts and clear translations , not on the unclear ones . So , even though I tell you it's 97% , don't let that freak you out , because there isn't a single passage that's based on our Christian beliefs that we're questioned . The clear parts are another way I like to think of this is with the Bible .

Speaker 1 30:08

I wear glasses and the darn thing about getting older is my eyes get worse and over time . Every year , I got to go to the optometrist , who's an expert who tells me what my latest prescription is and he corrects it , which is good . I currently , right now , have 2040 vision . What I've been told by the DMV is that this is good enough vision to drive , even though I can't make out people's faces in the back row because we're in low light conditions but this 2040 is considered drivable conditions that it's actually enough to navigate life . I think of the Bible , as we don't have 2020 vision with what scholars have gotten back to , but we have 2025 , 2030 vision . It's good enough to navigate life .

Speaker 1 30:55

We're able to tell where the dangers are and we're able to tell where things are safe , and we're able to navigate life with clarity and the text and translation that you have of your Bible is clear enough that you really can tell what God's word has to say . And what's good about a good translation is they'll have little notes that say oh well , watch out for this passage , or watch out for this passage , because we're unsure about that . So let me give you an example . At the end of the Lord's Prayer it says for thine is the kingdom and power and glory forever . If you've gone to a more liturgical church , this is part of Christian worship services and practices . That is not original to the Lord's Prayer but because it makes for a really nice ending for the Lord's Prayer , it got added as part of a church tradition . There's nothing dangerous heretical about that last line , but it's not original .

Speaker 1 31:44

We have a few places in the Bible where you have a few sentences like that to show up , but again , because we have so many copies , we're able to tell how those passages fit . Let me elevate the temperature a little bit for you . I wanna talk about the woman continent , adultery . That passage it's in John in your Bibles . The earliest , most reliable manuscripts do not include that passage . In fact it's found in other places , in John and the Gospel of Luke . In some manuscripts it's found at the end of Luke's Gospel . It's like it was such a good story . That is like old timey Bible where you had to like put that story in the Bible and the church was like we can't lose this story because it tells the essence of who Jesus is . But if you ask me , is that part of John , dr Tony , I'd say no , it's not .

Speaker 1 32:31

There's one other passage that is large and there's only two in the New Testament . I've just given you one and there's nothing heretical about that passage , just read it . The other one is the ending of Mark's Gospel . Mark's Gospel originally ended with the women going to the tomb . They see it's empty . They see an angel . The angel says go tell the disciples about Jesus . They freak out and they run away afraid . And that's how Mark ended . And the scribe said no resurrection appearances . What's up with that ? So what they did was they went over to Matthew's Gospel and Luke's Gospel and they took Matthew and Luke's accounts to the resurrection and they piece that together to write a new ending for Mark's Gospel . And so that has resurrection appearances , because they thought that would improve the text . Now the challenge with that is they also included some questionable teachings like drinking poisons and handling snakes and how you'll be safe from those things

Understanding the Bible's Accuracy and Purpose

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Speaker 1 33:26

I think this is a good example of probably a passage that we should say . Scribes added it , they were all attentioned , but it's not original to Mark's Gospel . In fact , what's cool about Mark's Gospel the way that it was originally written is it ends as like this dot dot dot . They ran away . They were afraid . What happened next with the church ? Did they tell their stories ?

Speaker 1 33:48

Mark has this dot dot dot because we know they told their stories and he's encouraging us to keep going with the story of Jesus . For Mark , he knows that the story of Jesus in the church isn't over yet and he wants us to be part of the story of Jesus and be part of that Gospel tradition that says we gotta go share people about Jesus' death and resurrection . It's a powerful ending with how Mark ended it . So those are , and those are really the two examples , those are the two gotcha passages that people like to come up and say well , if you can't trust the Bible because it has the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery and the Indian Mark , so you can't trust any of it . We all your Bible . The good Bible tells you that and you really . It's easy to say , okay , well , I'm gonna go with the clear parts . It's like glasses . We have 20 , 25 vision . We have 20 , 30 vision . The clear parts are very clear .

Speaker 1 34:39

A resource for you if you wanna investigate this is Craig Blomber has a book called Can we Still Believe the Bible , and he takes on some of these questions with a little bit more detail . That's quicker than a Sunday service . The third leg of the stool that we wanna talk about is the teaching . Can we trust the teaching of scripture ? And I love , as a starting point , numbers 2319 . Numbers 2319 says God is not a human being that he should lie .

Speaker 1 35:10

See , I think it's really important for us to come to the Bible with an expectation that God is true and that when God speaks his truth , he's not going to try to deceive us . When it comes to the Bible , god isn't trying to lie to you , he's not trying to deceive you , and so it's important for us to come with an attitude , an expectation that the Bible is true . And if we come with that expectation , if we come with an attitude of trust , it helps us with reading scripture . But there's issues that show up for us and that cause us to stumble Because , remember , the Bible is not written to you , it's written for you . So some of the questions that you and I have aren't the same questions that people in the original audience , in context , would have had . We have different questions and so the Bible can't always answer our questions , because we live in a different culture , time and circumstance .

Speaker 1 36:07

The one question I want to and we're gonna hit on a couple here the first one is is the Bible factually and historically accurate ? Are the details true ? And I think with this one we come with this expectation that we've got our cell phones it can record things . We've got our ring cameras that record things . We have the ability to record so much that when it comes to history , we expect this great deal of precision and accuracy when it comes to the stories of scripture . But instead the way that the Bible worked was it was spoken in community contexts where people held each other accountable , because you would tell the stories in a group setting and be like , hey , that's not how that story worked . This is the fact , this is the detail . And so , as a community , people could hold those stories true and they held each other accountable to it . But it's a very different experience than a community that holds out phones and has a great deal of precision . So let me give you a good example .

Speaker 1 37:02

This is from the Gospel of Luke . He's considered to be the most historical of the gospels and Luke opens his gospel with this , he says with this in mind , since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning , I too decided to write and order the account for you , most excellent theophilus . I'm a Bill and Tedz fan , so I'm like most excellent Ted Theodore Logan , great , it's orderly , it's investigated , fantastic . Well , no sooner do you get to chapter three than Luke writes this Luke 3.20 . Herod added this to them and he locked John up in prison . Now this is John the Baptist who's been locked up by Herod . Then 3.21 says this when all the people were being baptized , Jesus was baptized too . This is the next verse . I'm like wait what ? Who baptized Jesus ? John the Baptist ? But Luke just said he's in jail . How can John be baptizing Jesus from jail ? He's mixed up his facts and orders .

Speaker 1 38:00

How you might be tempted to think about this ? Well , it's because Luke is trying to tell the story for narrative purposes , for theological significance . He's telling the stories for a purpose . So anybody here like Christopher Nolan films . One of the things that Nolan is famous for is that every film he messes with time in some shape . It's part of his filmmaking devices . Every film that Nolan does has some messing with time , and so what Luke does here is Luke says you know what I want John's ministry to be first , because he's a forerunner to Jesus , and I want you to see how Jesus' ministry is even greater than John's , and so I wanna have a clear break between John's ministry and Jesus' ministry . So I'm gonna put all the John stuff from 3.20 and before and then I'm gonna have a clear start of Jesus' ministry . So Luke arranges a story for the purpose of showing how Jesus is more significant . He knows the order and the time . He's not trying to deceive us with that , but he's trying to tell the stories with a purpose . You see , the Bible focuses more on God's why than on our what , and we need to keep this in mind . It's more about God's why than our what , and sometimes we come to the Bible with a different set of expectations than what the Bible is trying to present . And if we can focus on the why , this helps us .

Speaker 1 39:16

Or another case that comes up is people say well , jesus wrote into Jerusalem , was there two donkeys or was there one donkey ? Well , they're both right , they're both telling the story , and it reminds me of a time that I went to court . Now , I didn't go to court because I was in trouble , I was on jury duty , and at jury duty there was one person who saw person A commit the crime and there was another witness who saw person B commit the crime , and then there was a third witness who saw both person A and person B commit the crime and the lawyers were having a whole field day . Like these three people , they can't even agree who did it and what , and all sorts of doubt was being cast because of the difference of these three people's testimony . At the end of the day , we realized as a jury that all their testimonies were true , from where they were coming from , and we were able to resolve that actually , both person A and B did the crime .

Speaker 1 40:08

When it comes to the Gospels and the Bible , the variance in storytelling actually speaks to the truth and the history of those stories that if every detail was exactly the same , we would wonder . Is there some sort of conspiracy where they're corroborating together . Why is it so ? It's like the kids who get in trouble and their stories are exactly the same . Having a little bit of variance and details in the story actually speaks to the truth of those stories , and so we have to have a different set of expectations sometimes when it comes to scripture than what we often come to . Let it speak on its own terms .

Speaker 1 40:46

The second question that shows up is is the Bible scientific ? And here I wanna start with a low temperature , one of a lesson from our past , and this is the story of Galileo Galilei . So Galileo was convicted as a heretic because he had the audacity to say that the sun was the center of the universe , not the earth . Because the church read the Bible and said the Bible says the sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises . It also says the world is firmly established and it cannot be moved . So the earth is fixed , the sun goes around it . The Bible said it . I believe it Galileo's heretic Because the church was approaching it as if the Bible was a scientific textbook , instead of realizing that the Bible was speaking from the times and experiences of people in the ancient world , which they didn't have telescopes to be able to tell how the universe fixed and worked around . They just had their eyes , which I mean it looks like the sun rises and sets and goes around us . So the Bible wasn't trying to bring some new scientific revolution with its revelation , it was just speaking to the times and circumstances of its original audience .

Speaker 1 41:55

And yet we still have a problem with this today . We have for a lesson from our present . We need to really take seriously this idea that the Bible is not a science book , that we need to let science do its science thing and we need to let the Bible speak into the things that the Bible is going to speak about . So how to read Genesis 1 , right ? So Genesis 1, ? The Bible says God made a good and orderly world . That's the point of Genesis 1 . Science asks how God made

Different Christian Views on Genesis 1

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this world .

Speaker 1 42:29

Now , certainly , genesis 1 says God spoke it over the course of six days , and so we can . Certainly , if you want to subscribe to six 24-hour days . God spoke it . It's a miracle , there's nothing wrong with that . But other Christians will approach this and say you know what ? It wasn't six 24-hour periods . We can read this as six periods of time , so a much longer period of time six ages really that God made the world . And that's another way to approach it .

Speaker 1 42:56

Other Christians read Genesis 1 and say you know what this is really talking about ? God's intelligent design of the world . And so let's look to see how God has intelligently designed the world . Other Christians approach it and say you know what it looks to me like ? God uses the process of evolution to create the world . God's still in control , god's not absent from this process , but God used evolution to rate the world . I just , you know , I just used the E word in church . I'm only a guest , so you can complain about me later , but I want us to see how there's actually a realm of possibilities where we're still affirming the truth of Scripture and yet believers approach that with different fashions . We don't have to have science versus the Bible in this antagonistic relationship that's often put together . I want us to give a reading of Genesis 1 that allows for all these readings .

Speaker 1 43:47

Genesis 1 creates this problem . Genesis 1 , 2 says the problem is the world is formless and empty . It's formless and void . So God then starts to work on a solution , and the solution is God first creates forms in the first three days and then he begins to fill those forms . There's actually two cycles that happen . So in day one , god creates the form of light . In day four , he fills that form with the specifics of the sun , the moon and the stars . Now this is really important because if you go linearly , there's always a problem , except for the 24 hour people of . Well , how can the sun be made after plants , photosynthesis . But there's actually even bigger problems . How do you have a world where you have land when the moon hasn't been made yet ? Which moon controls tides and what do we do with gravity and how the world spins around the sun ? There's a lot of problems by having the sun , moon and stars created as late in the state process if we go linearly . But if we see it as God made the form of light and filling the form with these farts , it starts to make sense that God is about order . Day two , God creates the sky and see the forms and he fills it with birds and fish . Day three , god creates the form of land and plants and on day six , he fills the land with animals and people , and the result of all this is God is able to rest . On day seven , genesis one is trying to clearly convey to us that God made an orderly world , and then it's good . So , if we want to go to the world from a scientific perspective , we're looking for rules and laws of nature , because Genesis says that God set up a world that is orderly , and so we can expect to be able to use our senses to be able to investigate this world as people who are created in the image of God , and to be able to figure out how this world works , because God made a world that is good and orderly .

Speaker 1 45:48

If you're interested in these topics and you want to explore a variety of views from people , I want to give you some more resources . And here this is the counterpoint series Bible and theology . So counterpoints , bible and theology that's the big series . They have about 40 books in this series , and what I love about this series is they have two , sometimes three , sometimes four different Christian views on controversial topics . Why I like this is because it encourages us to have conversations with other Christians who we may disagree with , but helps to teach us how to have conversations , not arguments .

Speaker 1 46:28

So , four views on creation . I've given you a sample of that right , trying to be generous , saying all the way from seven literal days to evolution . Let's have some generosity here with our views . Creation , evolution , intelligent design . Two views on homosexuality , the Bible and the church . What about four views on hell ? Or how about five views on the church and politics ? You won't want to read that one . That's not going to be a problem for us coming up or show them no mercy . Four views on God and the Canaanite genocide . There's a whole bunch of these are just a sample of what you can get from these , but I'd encourage you and what's great , I was having a conversation after the first service with someone .

Speaker 1 47:12

I said you know , I think one of the things that's really good is , even if you're having a conversation with someone you disagree with , saying , well , here's a Christian who agrees with you and here's a Christian who agrees with me , and now let's talk to you . It shows respect for those other people , even though it doesn't mean that you're getting persuaded of their views and ideas , but that simply that level of respect that gets shown can go so far in promoting conversations and relationships , because ultimately it's about Jesus and it's about the kingdom of God and pointing people to the kingdom of God . It's not about all of our different views about that kingdom , it's about Jesus and his kingdom and submitting to the reign of God . So here's some kind of points Again , I know I only did two topics .

Speaker 1 48:01

There's all sorts of topics and honestly , for other people , I think that this is where the questions come out . It's not really the text , it's not really the testimony . It's these kind of questions that I find the conversations that I have with my kids and their friends . So it's great resource . The final one that I want to talk about is why we can trust the Bible with what it tells us what to do . At the end of the day , I built a stool , but it doesn't do any good just being built . The way that I show that the Bible is trustworthy and true is if I'm willing to actually sit on it , if I'm willing to use it . All these other things I've been talking about , the theories and the ideas , that's all they are . If I really believe that the Bible is true , I will use it in my life . And here we get 2 Timothy , 3 , 16 and 17 .

Putting Jesus's Words Into Practice

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Returning to this verse , all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching , rebuking , correcting and training in righteousness , so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work . Notice the end , thoroughly equipped for every good work . The purpose of the Bible is to help us to do good works for God and His kingdom . Jesus puts it this way he talks about a parable of the wise and a foolish builder Matthew 7.24 .

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At the end of the day , as believers , as followers of Jesus , it's about us putting the words of Jesus into practice .

Speaker 1 50:05

And if we're honest , we can look at the church .

Speaker 1 50:07

Particularly the last couple of years with COVID , we've seen the great crash that has come around us as we built our house on so many other things than actually following and doing the words of Jesus .

Speaker 1 50:18

As we enter into this next political cycle , we're going to be tempted to build our house on so many other things than the words of Jesus .

Speaker 1 50:25

We need to be people that are engaged with culture , that are engaged with politics , that are engaged with justice , certainly , but we need to be people that put the words of Jesus into practice , because we build our house on the foundation of practicing the words of Jesus , and my prayer for you and for this church is that we would be people that put Jesus's words in practice . Let's pray , lord . Thank you so much for today . Thank you for the chance to build through this whirlwind of what it means to trust God's word . Help us to be people that put the teachings of Jesus into practice in our lives . Help God's word to be shaping and molding each of us , forming us into the image of Jesus , not into our own images , but the images of your Son . Thank you so much that you gave us the revelation of God through your word , so that we could be following and practicing your wills in our lives , in your Son's name , amen .