INTRODUCTION
• Today, we will dive into the second message of our Hot Topics series.
• The topic we are diving into today is one of the most important topics we will deal with.
• The question of the day is, CAN YOU TRUST THE BIBLE?
• This is a vital question for us to answer because if we are trying to win people to Jesus, the Bible is an essential part of the process.
• Think about it, if you are seeking to win over a skeptic, and you start using your Bible with them, they would want to know if you can trust it.
• The Bible claims to be inspired by God, as I would assume other "HOLY' books do.
• If a book claims to be inspired by God, the creator of Heaven and earth, I think there are some minimum expectations we should expect from said book.
• It should be historically and geographically accurate.
• In other words, it should jive with known history.
• The book should be accurate to known geography.
• When it says something is west of something, it should be accurate.
• We would also expect it to be consistent.
• I would also expect the book not to change over time and that what we now possess is like holding the original writings.
• In other words, what we have today has not deviated from the original.
• If it is from God, then it should not change, and if it is from God, the text should have been preserved, so what we have today is an accurate copy of the original.
• If someone was seeking to convert or win me over to Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientology, or some other belief system, I want first to make sure I can trust the book they claim is the one I need to follow.
• By the way, none of those mentioned can stand the test.
• I am going to go at the message in a little bit different manner than I usually do, we are going to read the text for the day together, and from our reading, we will see why it is vital for us to be able to trust the Bible.
2 Timothy 3:14–17 (NET 2nd ed.)
14 You, however, must continue in the things you have learned and are confident about. You know who taught you
15 and how from infancy you have known the holy writings, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
16 Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
17 that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work.
• In this passage, Paul is writing to his young protégé, Timothy.
• He has just finished telling Timothy that the times they live in are difficult and will likely get worse.
• People will become more selfish, arrogant, greedier, more brutal, and less interested in God and his ways.
• They will pretend to be godly but instead do what they want, led by their own desires (2 Timothy 3:1–9).
• Paul tells Timothy that he is different.
• Timothy has watched Paul's life, his faith, his love, and his struggles.
• Timothy recognizes that a life of faith will be difficult, but God is good (vv. 10–13).
• Paul wants Timothy to keep on keepin' on (v. 14).
• Timothy has been taught by the Scriptures since he was young.
• Scripture has helped him become wise and has led him to salvation through Jesus (v. 15).
• Paul tells the reader that Scripture is "breathed out by God," which is the path to understanding, instruction, discipline, correction, and growth (v. 16).
• Knowing Scripture equips the believer to live a life that aligns with God's will (v. 17).
• Think about this; Paul calls Timothy not to give up and to continue reaching and teaching people.
• Paul tells Timothy to do these things based on the fact that the Bible is inspired by God.
• Literally, God-breathed.
• He tells Timothy that Timothy knows the Scriptures, that he can use said Scriptures to help others grow in Jesus, and that the Scriptures will equip people to serve and live for Jesus.
• For Timothy to carry out his calling, he must know that he can trust the Bible.
• In your life, if you do not trust the Bible, you will never fully give yourself over to Jesus.
• There are many different ways we can set out to show that we can trust the Bible.
• I have chosen three things that will help us to see we can trust the Bible.
› Big Idea of the Message: How can we trust the Bible? We can trust that the Bible is God's Word because of its enduring message. The Bible remains the primary way God teaches, encourages, and guides humanity.
• One thing I will not be doing is using the Bible to prove the Bible.
• I wanted to open with our Timothy passage to offer one of the Bible's claims of inspiration.
• Using the Bible to prove the Bible is what it says it is does not work for those you are seeking to reach.
• For some, you must prove it is what it says it is; then, you can take them to the Bible.
• By the way, if we do not trust the Bible is what it claims, then we will question any and all that is written within the pages of Scripture.
• A resource each Christian needs to own is Josh McDowell's, Evidence That Demands A Verdict.
• Let's begin our journey this morning by seeing that...
SERMON
• YOU CAN TRUST THE BIBLE BECAUSE OF...
I. The continuity of the Bible.
• The continuity of the Bible deals with the concept of the consistent message of the Bible.
• The Bible is not inconsistent and is not contradictory.
• In other words, as an example, God does not tell you to love your enemy and later hate them.
• If one author wrote a book, it would be easy to maintain a united message, or even if a small group of writers gathered together to write a book, it would not be too difficult to maintain continuity throughout the book.
• Many see the Bible as one book versus a collection of "books."
• The continuity of the Bible is impressive when you consider the facts about how it was written.
• The Bible was written over about 1500 years. (Josh McDowell)
• The Bible was written by more than 40 authors from every walk of life, from kings to shepherds and everything between.
• Moses was a political leader and judge trained in the universities of Egypt.
• Joshua was a military leader, and Solomon and David were kings.
• Peter was a fisherman, Paul a former Pharisee.
• To think the Bible is cohesive is impressive when you understand the various walks of life the authors came from.
• The Bible was written in different places and at different times.
• Moses was in the wilderness, Jeremiah in a dungeon, Paul in Prison, and John while in exile.
• Of course, since the Bible was written over a 1500-year span, the times of the writing were different as well as the circumstances.
• David wrote during times of war, while his son Solomon wrote during times of peace and prosperity.
• Moses wrote while the nation of Israel was wandering, and many of the New Testament writers wrote during times of persecution.
• The Bible was written on three continents; Asia, Africa, and Europe.
• The Bible was written in three languages, the Old Testament was predominately written in Hebrew, and the New Testament was predominately written in Greek.
• There are also some pockets of Aramaic, like Daniel 2-7 and most of Ezra 4-7 in the Old Testament, and a few statements in the New Testament, like Matthew 27:46.
• According to Josh McDowell, Aramaic is linguistically very close to Hebrew and similar in structure.
• Aramaic texts in the Bible are written in the same script as Hebrew.
• There are a few other differences between the two languages that I will not dig into today.
• The other amazing thing about the Bible is it is written in a wide variety of literary styles, like poetry, historical narratives, songs, romance, law, biography, autobiographical, prophecy, parables, satire, and many other forms.
• When you start to dig into the facts of the construction of the Bible, it is incredible how unified it is in the message.
• Another amazing fact about the Bible is how it is stood the test of time unchanged.
• When you consider that the Bible books were written on perishable materials, for them to survive throughout the years is impressive.
• The Bible has survived through persecution, criticism, through time.
• How do you get a book that has defied the odds and is still with us?
• Did it happen accidentally, or is it the Inspired Word of God?
• YOU CAN TRUST THE BIBLE BECAUSE OF...
II. The manuscript evidence.
• This point is focused on, is what we now possess concerning the Bible in 2022, the same as what was initially penned by the authors, because if it is not, we have a problem.
• Since we do not have the original documents, how do we know what we have is accurate?
• The main focus of this point is the New Testament.
• It is funny when folks try to say that the Bible we have today cannot be the same as initially penned.
• They will say the period has been too long for it to be what the original was.
• If you go into most universities and ask if they question other books or writings of antiquity that we possess today regarding accuracy to the original, you will hear crickets.
• Now I am giving you a nerd alert warning.
• I want to draw your attention to a couple of charts on the screen.
• This first one shows the number of manuscripts (either partial or complete) of some of the more well-sourced writings of antiquity.
• CHART 1 (BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMPARED TO SELECTED ANCIENT SOURCES.)
• EXPLAIN CHART
• CHART 2 GALLIC WARS
• EXPLAIN CHART.
• CHART 3 NUMBER OF MANUSCRIPTS.
• EXPLAIN CHART.
• CHART 4 GAP CHART.
• EXPLAIN.
• There are roughly 6,000 surviving manuscripts for the New Testament alone.
• This makes it the best-attested document of all ancient writings.
• The next closest contender is Homer's The Iliad, which has roughly 1000 ancient existing copies.
• On the charts, when you see other documents with higher numbers, those numbers include more recent copies.
› The value of having a large number of manuscripts is that it provides us with ample opportunity to compare writings, which is especially valuable when cross-checking manuscripts from different geographic areas or from different time periods.
› When making these comparisons, you can determine whether it is apparent that the documents were reliably copied from the same source, and you can quantify how much they may have strayed from that source by seeing where and how they differ.
› In short, having an abundance of manuscripts shows us that copying Scripture was not like a game of "telephone."
› Comparing the incredible amount of manuscript evidence has shown that the New Testament is 99.5% accurate, and the vast majority of differences are in spelling or minor copyist errors. (https://reasonabletheology.org/reliability-bible-4-quick-thoughts/
• To put the 99.5% number in perspective, that number of mistakes would fill one-half of a handwritten page.
• None of the errors have any doctrinal impact.
• Having a vast number of manuscripts means that when you put all the existing manuscripts together if one has a mistake, the odds that any or the majority have the same mistake is pretty low.
• If I asked all of you to handwrite a copy of the Book of James, all of them, except a couple, would have some mistakes.
• However, if we put all of our copies together, we would have an almost, if not perfect, copy of the Book of James.
• In the next point, we will talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls and their impact on our thinking of the accuracy of the Old Testament.
• Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copy of the Old Testament we had was from around 950 AD, the Aleppo (uh lepp o) Codex.
• Liberal scholars surmised the Old Testament could not be trusted because the time between the original and the oldest copy was too great.
• Remember of earlier chart argument.
› The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940's allowed scholars to compare OldTestament manuscripts that were separated by hundreds of years.
› Of particular importance was the newly discovered copy of Isaiah, which predated the earliest known copy of the book by 1,000 years. (Clayton Kraby- Reasonable Theology)
• You can trust that the Bible we have today is the same one they had when the books were written.
• YOU CAN TRUST THE BIBLE BECAUSE OF...
III. The accuracy of the text.
• If the Bible is inspired by God as claimed, one would expect the bible text to be accurate to archaeological finds, that it would be accurate to known human history, and that the text would be geographically accurate.
• If the Bible says something is west of Jerusalem, it actually is west of Jerusalem.
• One would expect that things that can be proven are proven to be accurate.
• The Bible scores 100% on all these fronts.
• The Bible is accurate with human history and geography, and there has never been an archaeological find to contradict the Bible; archaeology has proven the Bible is accurate.
• We have an example of this with the Hittites.
• The Hittites are mentioned more than 50 times in the Bible.
• Though relatively obscure in the scope of world history, the Hittite nation played an essential role in the history of the Old Testament and has since helped verify the accuracy of the Bible.
• For many years, archaeologists and historians knew nothing of the Hittites, and critics of the Bible treated the Hittites as proof of the "mythology" contained in the Bible.
• The critics reasoned that, since they had no archaeological evidence of a Hittite civilization, it must never have existed, and the Bible must therefore be wrong.
• However, many archaeological discoveries, beginning in 1876, have since proved that the Hittites were a powerful people in the 15th and 16th centuries B.C. (https://www.gotquestions.org/Hittites.html)
CONCLUSION
• I can go on all day on this subject, but we will close it here.
• We have to trust the Bible is THE inspired WORD OF GOD, and not only because the Bible says it is, but we also need to look at the evidence.
• Books like the Koran have had many revisions that contradict one another, and to my understanding, one is supposed to follow the latest revisions.
• Books like the Book of Mormon are sketchy at best.
• Scientology was written by L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer.
• Before you take a plunge, see if the book a group uses is accurate.
• Our application point for this week is: As Christians, we can be confident that the message of Scripture is reliable and relevant to our lives—and live in that confidence.
