The Bible Why Live By It
Deuteronomy 6:4-19 2 Timothy 3:10-17 May 17,2015 Pastor Rick
The Bible has been called the Word of God. We live in a society that wants to ban the bible and the 10 Commandments, without really knowing what it says. Chuck Colson told the story of talking with an attorney who was insisting on a separation of church and state. This attorney talked about how glad he was to have the 10 Commandments taken out of the school.
But then the conversation turned to them talking about Kids not having many moral values and that they were not respecting people’s lives or property. Chuck asked them if he thought maybe the schools should try to teach them some moral values. Chuck then said, would you support putting up a list in classrooms saying, Do Not Tell Lies, Do Not Steal, and Do Not Kill. The attorney said, that would probably be a good idea.
How many of you have ever seen the show myth busters. A couple of guys go out and challenge certain things that people think are true, but may in fact not be true at all. We are going to begin with some myth-busters about the Bible, so that we can all be on the same page.
1. The Bible is a book written by Man to people to keep everybody under control.
• The bible is not one book, it is actually 66 books.
• The Bible was written in one person’s lifetime but took 1500 years to write.
• The Books of the bible came from Asia, Europe and Africa.
• The first five books were written by an African married to a black Woman. His name was Moses.
2. Everything in the bible is True.
• The bible records the lives of people. It records, the truth, half-truths and lies depending on what is being said. When Satan told Adam and Eve, if they eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would not die, but would become like God. It’s in the bible, but it was a flat out lie.
3. God APPROVES of everything in the bible.
• In Judges 19 a woman is violently raped in the bible and dies as a result. God records this action but does not approve of rape. The resulting consequences was 60,000 soldiers were killed.
4. The bible teaches, Judge Not.
• The Bible teaches that we are always to judge, but we are to judge fairly. The rest of the verse says, that when you are judging make sure that you are not doing the same thing, otherwise you can’t help the person who has the problem. In Matthew 7, Jesus was dealing with being a hypocrite in Judging. He speaks of a log in your eye with a speck in your brother’s eye. First take out the log, then help your brother get out the speck.
• There is a verse in 1 Corinthians 7: 39 that says, A believing woman who is a widow is free to marry anyone she wants, so long as he is in the Lord.
• I Corinthians 5: tells us to judge the behavior of other believers.
5. Every book in the bible carries EQUAL weight today.
• Some books were to point us to Jesus. Jesus said he came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. Those books that were to point us to Jesus have things in them that no longer apply. The purpose of the books on the sacrifice of animals was to show that one day God would provide a sacrificial lamb whose blood would take away the sins of the world. That is why we no longer offer animal sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. Some books are more important to our Christian lives today, especially the New Testament.
• You are going to know more about how to live your life for Christ reading Colossians than you will from reading Haggai.
6. The Bible is written in chronological order from Genesis To Revelation.
• The Bible tells the story of God creating mankind. We reject God and can’t do anything about making things right again. God promises human beings, that He will not abandon them but will send a savior that can bring them back into a right relationship with God.
• After the promise, people do more and more wicked and evil things. God’s judgement comes with the flood. God gives humankind another chance. Instead of going all over the world as he instructs, the people build a giant pyramid structure to try to reach the heavens, God instantly scatters people all over the earth.
• God chooses the family of Abraham to show his love for humankind. Abraham is a Gentile, but becomes the first Jew.
• has chosen as His own through whom God the Son would one day come.
• We see story of God’s people deliverance from Egypt, their entering the promise land, their rebellion against God because of their neighbors, the establishing of the nation with kings, their rejection of God again, God sending them into exile with the Babylonians as punishment, God restoring them back to Israel after 70 years. The prophets are always encouraging people to turn back from their wicked ways and serve God, because not only does God have their best interest at heart, but sin always brings judgement.
• The prophets are speaking at different places in history, so its important to know what is going on when you are reading them.
• As a new believer, get to know the New Testament First. Start your reading with Matthew.
7. All of the bible should be taken literally.
• Some of the bible is poetry.-God is my rock.
• Some of the bible is history, hymns, biographies, parables, letters, some is straight teachings and sermons. Not everything is the bible is addressed to us. God told Hosea to marry a prostitute. Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine for your frequent stomach illness.
8. The Bible is full of contradictions.
• The Bible has to be allowed to speak for itself. You have to look at the context in which a verse is written both what comes before it and what comes after it.
• Most people who think it is full of contradictions cannot thing of anything that has to do with the necessity of believing in Jesus Christ for our salvation.
• If the Bible allows something in one section and forbids it in another, then we must examine why to know the truth.
• We must also not allow tradition to overrule the bible. Christmas and The Crucifixion. Jesus crucified on Thursday.
• A Woman Should Not Be Allowed in the pulpit. There are no pulpits in the bible. For the first three hundred years, there were not any church buildings. The church meant the people.
9. The Bible has stories that can’t possibly be true.
• Jesus spoke of a real Noah and the flood and compared it to his coming.
• Jesus spoke of a real Jonah in the belly of a fish and compared it to his death and resurrection.
• Jesus spoke of a real Sodom and Gomorroh and compared it to the judgment to Come.
10. When John wrote in the the beginning was the WORD John was talking about the Bible.
• The Bible was not with God in the beginning of creation. The Word in that passage refers to Jesus, because it says the Word
was God and became flesh.
11. The Bible teaches that we are all God’s children and on our way to heaven. The Bible teaches that we are all created in the image of God and that God desires to have a relationship with us. But because of our sinful nature we are children of darkness on our way to hell. To become a child of God we must be adopted into the family of God by accepting the work of Jesus dying on our behalf. The New Testament speaks of the children of light and the children of darkness.
Now let’s look at why the bible can be trusted.
1. The Bible is not ONE book but 66 Books
• The books in the bible did not get included in the Old Testament by accident. The people of God rejected many sacred books for a host of reasons and recognized they did not rise to the level of inspiration by God that the 39 books did.
• 2. The 39 Books of the Old Testament Were Judged For AUTHENTICITY
• 3. The Old Testament Contains 300 prophecies concerning the first coming of Jesus. Jesus fulfilled all 300 of those prophecies. The chances of one man filling just 8 of the major prophecies of Jesus would be 1 in 10 17th power. That is one with with 17 zeroes after it. Do you know the odds of that would be like? If you covered the entire state of Texas with silver dollars two feet deep, mark one silver dollar and drop it from a plane somewhere over Texas and stir all the silver dollars. Send in a man blindfolded to the state of Texas and have him pick up the coin dropped from the plain with the mark on it on the very first try. It’s just not going to happen.
• Everything about Christianity rises and falls with Jesus Christ being the Son of God. 4. Jesus accepted the Old Testament as the Word of God. Matthew 5:17-18 (TNIV) 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
5. Our faith does not stand on the bible, But On The Resurrection Of Jesus Christ. Our Faith is completely on the Resurrection. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then everything about Christianity is fake. If Jesus did not rise, then it does not matter because we are still lost in our sins.
The early Christians did not have the New Testament, but they had first hand knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The most amazing thing about the resurrection is that nobody saw it coming. Even though Jesus kept telling people he was going to rise from the dead people didn’t get it.
Peter told him be quiet, there was no way he was going to be killed. The other disciples kept wondering, what on earth is he talking about rising from the dead. The women who went to the tomb expecting to anoint a dead body. The religious leaders thought the resurrection talk was all a hoax for the disciples to come and steal Jesus’ body. That’s why guards were at the tomb.
It was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, that turned the disciples from a bunch of scared, hopeless followers into people willing to die for the cause of Christ.
If Jesus had not of risen from the dead, he would have been a liar or a misguided lunatic. To say Jesus was a great moral teacher or a great prophet is to insult who Jesus claimed to be. He was killed because of his claim to be the Son of God.
6. People Do Not Die For A Lie. They may die for a belief that is false, but not when they know the belief is a lie. Yet Peter, James, and Paul all were killed for their belief that Jesus was the Son of God and that He was Raised From the Dead. A few months after the resurrection, people were being locked up and beaten to get them to stop talking about the resurrection.
7. The Gospels Were Based On First Hand Accounts.
The gospels were written by people who gathered information from people who had a first hand knowledge of what Jesus said, what Jesus taught, Jesus death, and Jesus’s resurrection. The early church recognized the authority of the writings of Paul, Peter, John, Luke, and Jude as speaking with the same authority as did the writers of the Old Testament.
Their letters and small books were circulated among the early churches so that believers would know how to live their lives in a way that was pleasing to God. We know the accuracy of the letters because there are over 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament.
8. New Testament Books Were JUDGED for authenticity.
In 367 AD, church leaders gathered to determine which letters and books were authentic and reliable enough to be considered inspired scripture. The books had a confirm to the rule of faith, b) have been written by or include the teachings of the earliest apostles, and be in general use in the churches.
You will hear of so called lost books such as the gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Judas. Those books were not lost. They were rejected as being on the level of Scriptures and not seen as inspired by God.
The first time we see all 27 books of the New Testament in one collection is at the Synod of Hippo in 393 AD. Which was held in North Africa. The books were reconfirmed in 397 at the Synod in Carthage also in Africa. They reconfirmed the 27 books again in 419 in another church meeting in Carthage. So we have had the Bible bound together as one book for the past 1600 years.
You cannot know the message of salvation without the Bible.
1. NATURE can only tell us so much about God.
As much as people may want to say, that they find God in nature, without the Bible, we would never come to know how we can be saved. Nature may show us God’s beauty, God’s order, and God’s abundance. But nature will never tell us how we can be made right with God. Nature can tell us that there is a creator behind all of it. Nature cannot tell us how to deal with all the wrong that every one of us knows we have done.
All RELIGIONS can be divided into one of two groups on how we can get right with God. The first group says if you do more good than bad, offer the right sacrifices, or try to live a good life then God will accept you. The first group thinks in terms of good people and bad people. Everything is based on works.
The second group says the situation is hopeless on our end and there’s nothing we can do. Only Christianity teaches that there is nothing we can do to make ourselves acceptable to God, and that all of us, even the so called good ones, are lost and on their way to hell and in need of a savior. The only way we can be made right with God, is for God to do something on our behalf. God sent Himself into the world in the form of Jesus Christ to do for us, what we could not do for ourselves, because God loves us even in our rebellious state. This is based on God’s grace.
3. We are all REBELS living in opposition to God.
The starting point in becoming a Christian is to recognize you are a rebel living in opposition to God and you need to surrender yourself to the authority of God if you are to have any hope of being saved. We deceive ourselves if we come to God on any other terms. God wants to save us, but God will not do it by force. Each of us has to make that decision for ourselves.
Here’s what we miss. God wants to do more than save us from hell. The biggest thing about God’s grace is not simply that God has saved us from hell, but God has saved us in order to manifest the life of Jesus Christ in us. Coming to Christ is more than, “now I don’t have to go to hell.” It is, now I am obligated to allow Jesus Christ to manifest Himself in me in every area of my life.
God’s Desire Is To CONFORM Us To The Image of Christ.
How do we know, what God wants to manifest in us, or what it is that we should be becoming. This is where the Scriptures come into our lives to let us know if we are being conformed more to the life God is calling us to live. God is not conforming us to simply die in the grave. God is conforming us for a work we are to do in heaven.
There is nothing in the bible that says heaven is made up of people floating on clouds or heaven being one eternal worship service. Jesus spoke of people being in charge of cities based on their faithfulness here in this life. Heaven is going to have all kinds of assignments for people to do. God’s trying to get us ready for those assignments now.
D. The purpose of the Scriptures is to PREPARE us For The Future.
We find in 2 Timothy 3:16 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (TNIV) 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that all God's people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
1. The Scriptures Are To EQUIP Us For What God Wants Us To Do
Notice that it says all Scripture, not just the parts that we like. We can’t pick and choose which parts we want to obey just to be accepted by other people or to try to make ourselves or others feel more comfortable with sin.
The Scriptures are for teaching which means that we come to Scriptures for wisdom on how to make good choices for the things we are facing. We find knowledge on what to do in various situations. We come to the scriptures as a student eager to learn, not as a new teacher seeking to change to meaning of the Scriptures to suit our own ends.
Can you imagine showing up to learn a foreign language, and telling the instructor why the rules for the language are all wrong, because that’s not how the rules apply in your own language.
The Scriptures are for rebuking which means that all of us are going to discover, there are times when we are going in the wrong direction and will need to get back on course. When our actions do not align themselves with the Scriptures, we are the ones who need to make the change. The Word of God isn’t to be changed or adjusted based on the cultural values or norms going on in the society. God knows that every sin carries within it its own consequence for destruction. It may not be immediately apparent to us, but it is still there.
If you notice, the Bible never tells us what kind of government to set up, it never tells us which political party to belong to, it never tells us what kind of church building to build or what kind of clothes to wear. The reason is the word of God is to permeate every culture, in every time period, in every place of the world. No matter what the structure is, our goal is to transform that institution, that government, the job, that society and make it more Christ like, by winning the people in it to Jesus Christ so that they can influence the society
The Scriptures are for correcting, which means they give us guidance on how to restore what we have broken through our actions. How many of us have been aware when we have broken a relationship through our words or deeds or lack of deeds. What do we do when we have wronged another person? The Scriptures provide an answer. What do we do when we have disobeyed God? The Scriptures provide an answer. What do we do when someone asks us if what they are doing is wrong? The Scriptures provide an answer.
The Scriptures provide training for righteousness. So often people want to know, how far can I go before it becomes sin. But the Scriptures tell us to be holy, because God is holy. Jesus evens has the audacity to tell us be perfect therefore as you heavenly Father is perfect. None of us have reached the standard of holiness that God is calling us to and none of us have reached the level of Perfection Jesus spoke of. A true Christian never thinks he or she is better than anyone else, because what matters is whether he or she is at the place God is calling him or her to live.
The goal isn’t how close can I live to sin, but rather how close do I want to be toward God. We all have temptations for sin that we want God to make a tiny exception for. Instead of turning it over to God, we may choose to keep it close by just in case we want to reach out for it. Some of us won’t come to Christ, because we would rather hold on to it than change our behavior for Christ. You need to ask yourself, in a 100 years will you be happy with the choice that you held on to the sin and kept Jesus at a distance.
The Bible helps to understand, that God was in the beginning and that all of us are His creation and all of us will give an account of our lives to God. God loved the nation of Israel, but God gave it the freedom to reject Him and His word, which they did. Eventually God gave them what they wanted, and their enemies slaughtered many and took the rest into captivity. God’s love for them kept postponing the judgment they would face, but eventually their sin won out.
There is a spiritual enemy who wants to keep our rebellion against God a secret from us. He wants us to believe, we are all okay with God. The Scriptures are honest enough with us to let us know, that’s just not true. It is up to us to decide if we will stand before God as a rebel in defiance or as a servant trying to live for God’s Son Jesus Christ. God does not send anybody to hell, we go there on our own. God simply gives us what we died demanding which is a life either away from Christ or one with Christ.
There’s no reason to think if you do not want Christ now, that you will be entitled to him in heaven. There’s every reason to believe, that if you desire to live for Christ on earth, you will want to live with him in heaven.
The Bible Why Live By It
Deuteronomy 6:4-19 2 Timothy 3:10-17 May 17,2015 Pastor Rick
A. The Myth Busters Concerning The Bible
1. The Bible Was Written By A ______________ To Keep Everybody Under Control.
2. Everything in The Bible Is __________________. Genesis 3:4-5 The Serpent
With Eve.
3. God _________________ Of Everything In The Bible. Judges 19:1:-21:1
4. The Bible Teaches ________________Not. Matthew 7:1-5, 1 Corinthians 7:39, I
Corinthians 5:1-13
5. Every Book In The Bible Carries ___________________ Weight Today.
Leviticus 4:1-35 Sin Offering
6. The Bible Is Written In Chronological_______________ From Genesis To Revelation
7. All Of The Books Of The Bible Should Be Taken _______________________.
Parables, Proverbs, Poetry, Narrative, History, Teachings
8. The Bible Is Full Of _________________________.
9. The Bible Has Stories That Can’t Possibly Be___________________.
Noah & The Flood, Jonah & The Fish, Sodom & Gomorrah
10. When John Wrote In The Beginning Was The ______________, John Was Talking About The Bible. John 1:1-2 (TNIV) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
11. The Bible Teaches We Are All God’s _______________________ And On Our Way To Heaven. John 3:16-20
B. Why Can The Bible Be Trusted
1. The Bible Is Not _______ Book But Rather 66 Books.
2. The 39 Books Of The Old Testament Were Judged For __________________.
3. The Old Testament Contains_____________ Prophecies Concerning The First Coming Of Christ
4. Jesus _______________________ The Old Testament Books As The Word Of God
5. Our Faith Does Not Stand On The Bible, But On The ________________________ Of Jesus.
6. People Do Not Die For A ________________
7. The Gospels Were Based On ________________ ______________ Accounts
8. New Testament Books Were______________________ For Authenticity
9. The New Testament Confirmed In Synod of Hippo 393 AD, Synod Of Carthage 397, and Again In Carthage In 419
C. You Cannot Know The Message Of Salvation Without The Bible
1. _________________________ Can Only Tell Us So Much About God
2. All____________________ Can Be Divided Into 1 Of 2 Groups
Romans 3:10-12 (TNIV) 10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
3. We Are All ________________Living In Opposition To God
4. God Wants To Do More Than Save Us From Hell.
5. God’s Desire Is To _______________________ Us To The Image Of Christ
D. The Purpose Of The Scriptures Is To _______________ Is For The Future
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (TNIV) 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that all God's people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
1. The Scriptures Are To ______________ Us For What God Wants Us To Do.
2. Teaching, Rebuking, Correcting, Training In Righteousness
3. God Gives Us Freedom To Choose What To Do With The Scriptures
4. God Will Still Hold Us To The Same Account At The Judgment
Special Thanks to Jerry Shirley and David McFadden for some of their research in their messages on the Bible in Sermon Central.
