How Can I know if the Bible is God’s Word?
Does the Bible claim Inspiration?
Scrutinize the Sources of the Bible
Are the Manuscripts Reliable?
Are the Apostles Trustworthy?
Test the Truthfulness of the Bible
Is the History Accurate?
Are the Prophecies confirmed?
Examine the Effects of the Bible
Are lives being changed?
Video – Rediscover the Bible
Slide after Video
Have you ever really thought about the Bible?
I mean, is this really true?
Can this really be God’s word to us?
What about the Koran? What about the Book of Mormon? What about any other religious writing?
How can I know if the Bible is really the word of God? Can we know?
This is really something quite important for us to know.
Why?
Because the Bible is our primary source for
most of what we know about Jesus Christ
all of what we know concerning salvation and how to attain it, and
all of what we know regarding how we should live our lives to the glory of God.
This book, if true, is one that will affect every aspect of our life now as well as our life eternal.
So, we had better try and discern if the Bible really is God’s word and is something I should believe and rely on?
To discern that, we are going to begin looking at some of the evidence to make a determination as to if it is trustworthy or not which will help us to decide why we should believe the Bible.
Understand that today, this is not so much a message from the Bible as it is about the Bible. But I try to preach on this every couple years, because this is vital for us to know, if we are going to be able to respond to messages from the Bible.
So, how can we go about determining if the Bible is something that can be relied on as the very word of God?
To start, we want to ask first
Does the Bible claim to be Inspired?
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What does the Bible say about itself. This is an important question, because we would expect that if God gave us something from Him, he would tell us that it was from Him so we would know.
It doesn’t prove anything, but we would expect it. If it doesn’t claim divine inspiration, that would raise some serious doubts.
But in fact the Bible does claim to be inspired.
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2 Timothy 3:16 - All Scripture is God-breathed…
And Peter says in
2 Peter 1:21 - prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Not only that, but Jesus says to the apostles that
John 14:26 - “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
So the Bible claims to be the inspired word of God and Jesus tells us that the apostles would be able to recall and be taught by the Holy Spirit so the things they wrote would be the very word of God.
Now, As I said earlier, this doesn’t prove anything, only this is what we would be expect.
Transition
For us, however, to get a better understanding if this is something we can believe to be God’s word, we are going to have to look at other evidence.
So the first thing we want to do is
Scrutinize the Sources of the Bible
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Is what we are reading authentic? So, we ask
Are the Manuscripts Reliable?
How can we be sure that what we are reading is actually what the apostles wrote down?
Handwritten Copies
Aren’t the manuscripts we have just handwritten copies of handwritten copies?
I mean, over time, things might have been changed or altered or mistakes could have been made.
The truth is that we can be very certain that we have what the apostles and prophets actually wrote.
Copying process
That is because the copyists who copied Scripture took their job very seriously.
They had all kinds of safeguards in place to make sure they produced accurate and reliable copies.
They knew how many words and letters were in each line they would copy, they knew how many lines were in a book, they knew the middle word and letter of each line and book and they would double check these to make sure it was correct.
If they found errors, they would start over!
Dead Sea Scrolls
Maybe you still don’t believe this could be too accurate.
The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls has helped confirm the accuracy of this process.
Up until the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, the oldest manuscript we had of Isaiah was dated about 900 AD. In the dead sea scrolls there was a nearly complete manuscript of Isaiah dated about 100 BC, that is 1000 years earlier than anything we had.
When compared with the manuscripts from 1000 years later, they are a 95% match and the 5% that is not is spelling variations and missed words or lines.
This copying process proved accurate for 1000 years.
Large number of copies
Not only that, but then we have about 25,000 New Testament manuscripts and fragments to compare together to be more assured of the accuracy of the New Testament.
When we compare them together we can find any errors that may have been missed in any part of the copying process.
That is because if errors were made by individual copyists, they would not all make the same mistake. Having a bunch of copies to compare helps discover those and be assured of the accuracy.
Transition
Ok, so we can trust that the manuscripts that the Bible is translated from are accurate recordings of what the Apostles wrote.
But even if it is accurate, is it true?
If a liar writes something down, and someone else copies it, I may have an accurate recording of what the liar wrote, but that doesn’t help me know the truth because the guy is a liar.
So, in Scrutinizing the Sources, we also want to know,
Are the Apostles Trustworthy?
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The apostles were making some pretty bold claims. Jesus died and rose again proving that He is God.
There are only a few options for them to make this claim.
Either they were lying, or they were crazy, or they were telling the truth.
Were they lying?
People lie to either be able to gain something or to avoid trouble. People don’t lie to get into trouble.
So, Did they have anything to gain by starting up Christianity?
Did they get rich or gain power, or gain pleasure or avoid suffering?
Well, not only did they not get rich or gain pleasure, they suffered and died because of what they were saying!
Listen to what happened to them because of their preaching that Jesus died for sins and rose from the dead.
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Acts 5:40 - They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.
Suffering, persecution and death were the reward for these apostles for preaching the gospel. And yet they did it.
Were they crazy
Ok, so they weren’t lying, but maybe they were crazy? What they were saying sounds crazy. Jesus was dead and now is alive?
But crazy people are not all crazy in the same way. They will not all be saying the same thing. Not only did all the apostles claim they saw Jesus alive after he was dead, but Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, that more than 500 others saw that Jesus alive after he was crucified.
There were many credible sources that were saying the same thing. Having so many claiming the same thing eliminates insanity from the list.
Koran and Book of Mormon
This is where the Koran and book of Mormon will break down. While the New Testament records the claims about Jesus from numerous sources that all agree, the Koran and book of Mormon only have one source claiming that it is divine.
The Koran records the sayings of Mohammed that He says God told him.
The Book of Mormon records a supposed translation of some special angelic plates that Joseph Smith made, but we don’t have the plates and it is only his word.
Were these men (Mohammed & Joseph Smith) crazy? Were they delusional? Perhaps because there are no others claiming to see or hear what they saw or heard.
But that argument can’t be made against the apostles and others from their day since there were so many that were all saying the same thing and they were all willing to suffer and die to continue saying it.
Maybe they really believed but were wrong
People today believe things and are wrong.
And there are people from other religions, that are willing to die for what they believe
What is the difference between them and the apostles?
Well there is actually a big difference. I talked about this for the resurrection a couple weeks ago. The apostles not only believed what they were saying, they knew what they were claiming as 100% true or false, they were not really proclaiming it by faith.
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John 20:29 - Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
These guys were willing to die for what they knew was either true or false. If what they were proclaiming was not true, they would not have been willing to suffer and die as they did.
These were the same men who faithlessly fled the night Jesus was arrested and now were fearless proclaimers of Jesus as the Christ, the one who died and rose from the dead.
The only explanation is that what they were saying is true, they saw the resurrected Christ and the Holy Spirit now indwelled them.
Ok, so as we scrutinize the sources, we can be confident that the Manuscripts are accurate and the Apostles are trustworthy. That is good, but we want to know more.
So the next step would be to
Test the Truthfulness of the Bible
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We need to see if what is accurately recorded for us can be checked against reality.
To do that, we want to ask
Is the History Accurate?
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If the Bible is really the word of God, then God is not going to make mistakes concerning history. After all, He knows history before it even happens.
So is the Bible historically accurate in the things that can be checked?
The Bible has proven to be incredibly accurate.
Archaeology has confirmed so much of the historical facts of the Bible.
Hittites
For instance in the Old Testament, mentioned 61 times are a people group called the Hittites. You may remember that Bathsheba’s husband was Uriah the Hittite, whom David had killed. (2 Samuel 11:3).
Anyway, up until the start of the 20th century, critics of the Bible scoffed at the mention in the Old Testament of the Hittite people since there was no evidence in history or archaeology that corroborated what the Bible said.
That is until the early 20th century. Then through archeology, evidence of the Hittite people was discovered in the area of Turkey, showing once again the historical accuracy of the Bible.
Over the years, there have been many discoveries that continue to confirm the people groups, the places the Bible mentions, the political leaders of the time, showing the reliability of the Bible.
In fact, so many times, archeology confirmed what the Bible said regarding history.
Transition
Ok, Maybe the apostles and prophets are reliable and the history is accurately recorded, but the Bible makes a lot of future predictions.
Can the Prophecies be checked?
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With the sheer number of prophetic statements, many of which should have already come to pass, if this is not from God, we should be able to determine something that failed, proving it is not from God. Now, I understand that one person could say that a prophecy has failed and another might say that it just hasn’t happened yet.
So, let’s look at what Christianity argues has happened, the coming of the Messiah, and see how the Messianic prophecies hold up against reality because Scripture prophesied quite a few things regarding the coming Messiah that would not be able to be determined by someone just making the claim of being the Messiah without actually being the Messiah.
For instance, there are many prophecies concerning His lineage.
Lineage
Messiah would be born in Bethlehem – Micah 5:2
Messiah would be born of a Virgin – Isaiah 7:14
Messiah would be a Descendant of Abraham, Isaac, from the Tribe of Judah, and a descendant of David.
There are many prophecies concerning the events surrounding his death
Death
Messiah would be silent before His accusers – Isaiah 53:7
Messiah would be mocked – Psalm 22:7
Messiah’s hands and feet would be pierced – Psalm 22:16
Messiah would be with wicked and rich at his death – Isaiah 53:9
And these are just a few of the prophecies that only God would have control over.
All of these things were true about Jesus and verified in the New Testament.
A Mathematician once calculated the odds of any one man fulfilling only 8 of these Messianic prophecies as 1 in 1017.
To put that in perspective, if you consider that some people estimate that somewhere around 100 billion (1 to 1011) have ever lived in all of history.
That means in all of human history, there hasn’t even been 1 to the 1017 people who have ever existed. You would have to multiply 100 billion by a million more to get to 1 in 1017.
It is not believable that someone could fulfill those prophecies by chance.
Transition
Well, when we Scrutinze the Sources, we see that they are reliable, when we Test the Truthfulness, we find that the Bible has been accurate in amazing and miraculous ways.
One last thing we want to do is
Examine the Effects of the Bible
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You would think that if God gave us something so we could know Him and know how to live, it would have effects in people’s lives.
So, we need to ask,
Are Lives being changed?
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By that I mean, how has the Bible changed the lives of those who have put into practice and believed the truth about what it teaches about Jesus.
Has the Bible had a powerful effect on changing people’s lives?
Because the Bible tells us it is powerful.
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Hebrews 4:12 - For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
If God’s word is living and active it should be powerfully transforming lives.
We do see that it seems to have transformed lives of many people from the apostles, to Paul to even people today.
But we also see those who claim to be Christians who still do a lot of horrible stuff.
How do we account for that?
Well, one of 2 ways.
First, maybe they are not really a Christian.
There have been people throughout history that have professed a belief in Christ and not really believed. Therefore, there is no effect on their life.
The Bible tells us to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith.
2 Corinthians 13:5 - Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you — unless, of course, you fail the test?
Secondly, it may be because a lack of maturity.
If someone is a new believer or they are not keeping in step with the Spirit,
and not reading the word,
That too just shows the truth that the Bible is the word of God. If you are not reading and studying God’s word, then your life is not going to be experiencing the power of the word in transforming your life.
It is through the Spirit of God, taking the word of God and transforming the lives of those who have believed in Jesus as God.
Conclusion
So, there is a preponderance of evidence supporting the truth that the Bible is the word of God.
So what? What should I do in response to that if I believe that?
First, if you have not done what the Bible says about believing and receiving Jesus as Savior, then you should do that.
John 1:12 - Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
Romans 10:9 - That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Receive Jesus by confessing your belief and be saved.
Secondly, read and study God’s word.
You will never be able to experience the life changing work of God’s word without reading and studying the Bible. It is the word of God to us. These are the things that the God of the universe wants us to know so we can live life!
Youversion for smart phones or computer
They have all kinds of reading plans for you to get God’s word in your mind and heart.
On our website, we have the audio for the New Testament. You can download that to your computer or your ipod and listen to God’s word.
Get in a Bible study – We have different studies going on right now.
Women’s studies on Friday mornings and Monday evenings, Men’s studies on Saturday mornings, studies throughout the week available. Join one.
If you want your life to be transformed, you need to receive Christ and be in God’s word.
If you don’t know a time when you have consciously turned to Christ and confessed your belief in Him then won’t you do that this morning?
Let’s pray.
