How Do I Know The Bible Is True? Series

ENGAGE

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for some of you, this may very well be my last Sunday here at TFC for a while. You see this past couple of weeks I have received several calls from the IRS indicating that there is a warrant for my arrest and informing me that if I don’t pay my back taxes by means of a prepaid debit or credit card immediately, I am subject to arrest. So I’m expecting to be arrested any day now.

Obviously, I’m being a bit facetious here because those calls are obviously a scam. But they have been so prevalent that the IRS has had to issue several statements to let people know how the IRS legitimately contacts people if there is an issue with their taxes.

Last week at the sunrise service I talked a bit about some other hoaxes that have been carried out over the years on April Fool’s Day, but obviously scammers who are out to take advantage of the gullibility of people don’t limit themselves to one day a year.

Perhaps some of you who are on Facebook have seen this picture. [Show picture of Bill Gates offering to give $5,000 to anyone who shared the kink to that post] I won’t ask for a show of hands because I don’t want to embarrass anyone, but how many of you shared that post? Perhaps you did that thinking there really wasn’t any harm in hoping for an easy $5,000, but it is actually pretty easy to do some quick research that would have revealed that picture was a hoax by a prankster that took this picture [Show next picture] from a Reddit “Ask me anything” session that Bill Gates had taken part in in the past and photoshopped in the message that appears on Facebook.

With these kinds of hoaxes there are all kinds of resources we can go to in order to figure out if something is true or not. But how do we go about determining if something is true or not when the original sources aren’t around any more, especially when it is something that is crucial to our lives if it is true? That’s the question I’ll be addressing this morning.

TENSION

This morning I’m going to begin a five-sermon series titled “Hard Questions, Honest Answers”. Whether you’ve been a disciple of Jesus for a long time or you have not yet made the commitment to make Him your Lord and Savior, I’m pretty sure that you have questions about the Bible, God, Jesus and faith. And you’re in good company. As you read through the Bible you will find that almost everyone that we consider to be a hero of the faith today had questions about God. Some of them, like Moses, asked God those questions face to face. Some of them, like David, wrote down their questions in the form of Psalms. Some of them, like Philip and Thomas, presented their questions to Jesus.

I want to reassure you that if you have questions this morning, God is not offended. I don’t know just how accurate the number is, but one commentator that I read this week claimed that there are nearly 3,300 questions in the Bible. So much of the Bible was written in anticipation of the questions that God expects we are going to ask.

The first question that I’m going to deal with this morning is foundational to all the other questions that we’re going to deal with in this series and any other questions you might have about God.

How Do I Know the Bible is True?

That really is the key question, isn’t it? Since we do the very best we can here at TFC to base everything we teach and do on the Bible, then it is essential that we have confidence that the Bible is true and that we can therefore rely upon it.

I’m sure that most of you have heard a lot of objections to the reliability and truth of the Bible over the years. I want you to think about some of the objections that you’ve experienced firsthand in your life. Maybe you heard some of these:

• The Bible is just an antiquated collection of fables and myths

• The Bible is full of contradictions and mistakes

• Why are some ancient texts included in the Bible while others were excluded?

• The Bible has been proven false by historical records and archaeology

• The Bible had been changed many times over the years

I obviously don’t have time to deal with all those objections, and many more, in the time we have this morning. So I am going to approach this from a more positive angle and share with you the reasons that I do believe that the Bible is the Word of God, that it is true and that it can be relied upon. And while that might not answer all these objections, I am confident this message will do two things for you: