INTRODUCTION
An atheist was out fishing near Europe, when all of a sudden a huge dragon type amphibian began to come out of the water. With snarling teeth it moved closer to the atheist. In desperation the fisherman shouted "Dear God, Please save me!" All of a sudden, everything stopped moving and the heavens opened and a deep voice said, "I thought you didn’t believe in me?" The atheist said, "Give me a break, two minutes ago I didn’t believe in the Loch Ness monster either!"
Today we are going to start on a journey in which we are going to try to uncover some treasure that will change our lives.
How many of you when you were children used to dream about finding buried treasure in the back yard or out is some field somewhere?
There have been movies made about people finding a secret map that would lead them to some long lost treasure.
Today we are going to start on a journey through the gospels in an effort to find Jesus.
What I mean by that is that we are going to go on a journey with Jesus through the Gospels in a effort to get to know Him better, to find out what Jesus is really all about and who He really is.
It is my hope that during this journey that we will embark on together that you will come to not only realize who Jesus is from an intellectual stand point, but that in the depths of you heart, you will know Jesus. It is my hope as you discover the Jesus that your life will not be the same. We are going to see that we can believe in the Jesus in the Bible.
Many times in church, we will tell you what you ought to do, but we do not really spend a lot of time getting to know the WHY. That WHY is Jesus!
Before you embark on a journey to look for treasure, you need to have a map to follow.
Today I want us to start our journey by trying to answer the question; “Can I trust the map?”
The map that we are going to use on our journey is the Bible.
There are people today who make a living at treasuring hunting. If you watch the Discovery channel, they will show people who are looking for lost ships. Before these people just take out to sea, they spend a considerable amount of time researching any maps they may have. They do not want to waste time by following a faulty map.
Today we are going to take a look at the Bible to see if we can trust it as a map to God.
As we start out on our journey, you will see that we can trust the Bible as our map to God because of the sources that were used to make the map. Secondly we will look at the method used to compile the map and finally we will look at the reason for making the map.
I hope that after today’s message that you will value the Bible that you have because it will lead you to Jesus.
Let us start our journey in Luke 1:1-4!
SERMON
WE CAN TRUST THE MAP BECAUSE OF:
I. THE SOURCES THAT WERE USED TO MAKE THE MAP 1-2
1. Primary sources were used.
What is a primary source?
A primary source is an eyewitness or someone who directly participated in the activity in question.
Look at what Luke says in verses 1 and 2. (READ)
A primary source is not someone who heard something about something; it is an eyewitness. Luke says that the sources that he used were those who were eyewitnesses.
In a court of law, we do not accept hearsay evidence. The most accepted form of evidence is an eyewitness.
Luke says that he used eyewitnesses and servants of the word.
In other New Testament books they said they are writing as a servants of the word, they were saying that they were eyewitnesses. Listen to a couple of passages: 1 JOHN 1:3 what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
2 PETER 1:16 For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
ACTS 4:19-20 But Peter and John answered and said to them, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard."
There are more passages that we could look at on this also.
2. The importance of primary sources.
(I am going to be giving you a lot of facts, if you would like to investigate what I am telling you further, I got my facts from Josh McDowell’s Book Evidence that Demands a Verdict and Lynn Gardner’s Book, Christianity Stands True among others) I also will be taping this if you miss anything.
There had been efforts to discredit the Bible by liberal scholars who start off with the premise that the Bible cannot be the Word of God.
The way that they tried to discredit it was to say that the New Testament books were written in the second century AD. This would discredit the fact that eyewitnesses wrote the books.
This theory came crashing down when the John Ryland fragment was found which contained John 18:31-32 and 36-37. This text dated to 125 AD showing that the books had to be done before that time since it was a know fact that the Gospel of John was the last book completed.
If you get the New Testament written in the second century, then you have a book that is making false claims.
3. The dirty little secret. (Figures from Josh McDowell’s Evidence that demands a verdict pp. 39-59)
How many of you have heard of the Greek poet Homer who wrote among other things the classic the Iliad? Homer wrote this book in about 900 BC. Guess how old the EARLIEST copy we have is? 400 BC, a time span of over 500 years. Do you hear people doubting the accuracy and authenticity of The Iliad? By the way did you know that there are only 643 manuscripts still in existence from antiquity!
Homers’ writing was the most WELL supported document in antiquity with 643 copies. The New Testament has over 24,000 manuscripts with the earliest one dating 125 AD, within 25 years of the completion of the New Testament.
No one doubts the accuracy of Caesars Gallic Wars which we wrote between 58-50 BC citing the exploits of his military campaigns. Guess what, there are only 8 or 10 good copies of this and the oldest one dates to 900 AD, over 1,000 years from when it was penned? Aristotle’s writing are taken as accurate. There is over a 1,400-year gap between when he wrote and the oldest copy we have. Further more there are only 49 copies of any one of his writings.
4. Implications
One of the reasons that we can trust the map (Bible) is that is was written by eyewitnesses or it gathered from primary sources under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
If you were going to follow a map, wouldn’t you want to follow a map made by someone who has seen the treasure!
Luke said in verse one that many had undertaken to compile an account of Jesus and what happened. The “many” were people who were not eyewitnesses nor did the y seek the eyewitnesses. He was not speaking Matthew, Mark or John because Matthew was an eyewitness, Mark was not written until 65-68 AD so it was not written yet and John’s gospel was not written until 85-90 AD.
WE CAN TRUST THE MAP BECAUSE OF:
II. THE METHOD USED TO MAKE THE MAP V 3
1. Researched facts
In verse three Luke tells us that he researched his facts before he penned them. He did not just decide to make up a bunch of stuff. He investigated what he wrote.
He spoke to the eyewitnesses that could have included, Mary the mother of Jesus, his brothers (Matthew 12:47-49, John 2:12, 7:3-10), the seventy (Luke 10:1) and others.
It is one thing to write something, it is another to research the facts. Journalism seems to fall a little short in this day on that one.
2. Established accuracy
Luke established to accuracy of what was told to him before he wrote.
Many people today say if the Bible was the word of God that it cannot be today because it was copied so many times.
This is a concern that needs to be answered.
From 125 AD to 325 AD we have over 5,000 partial or full Greek (we have close to 20,000 other in other languages like Latin) manuscripts of the different books of the Bible. When you put all of them together, there is less than one half of a hand-written page (of over 500 pages in the Greek) of the New Testament that comes into question. None of that ½ page changes and teaching.
If we all had to copy a 500 page book by hand, each of us would miss a word or a phrase, but when you put all 100 of us together and compile our work, you would have an accurate copy of the original.
The Old Testament used to take a lot of heat from the people because the oldest known copy of the Old Testament came from 900 AD. People said you cannot trust the accuracy of the Old Testament since the last Old Testament book (Malachi) we written around 425 BC. These are the same people who would not question Aristotle, Caesar or Plato with better than 1,000 between the oldest copies and when they wrote them.
In March of 1947 an Arab shepherd was looking for a lost lamb when he tossed a rock into a hole in a cliff on the West side of the Dead Sea about 8 miles south of Jericho. To his surprise he heard the shattering of pottery. He discovered the Dead Sea scrolls that had been written around 200-100 BC. They were hidden in the cave around just before Titus marched into Jerusalem in AD 70 to destroy the city. There were several jars with leather scrolls that had been unopened for over 1900 years!
Guess what they found. When they looked at the scrolls, one thing they found a full scroll over 24 feet long and 10 inches high of he book of Isaiah. When they translated it from the Hebrew, they found that in Isaiah 53 of the 166 words, there were only 17 letters in question, ten other them were simply a matter of spelling and the others were stylistic changes that did not alter the meaning.
Two of the Isaiah scrolls when translated proved to be word for word identical to our Hebrew Bible over 95% of the text, word for word. There was over a 1000-year gap in our Hebrew Bible and the DSS Isaiah! The 5% variation consisted of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling!
3. Orderly account
Luke did not just write down a bunch of sayings, but he wanted to write things in some sort of order.
Luke is not fully chronological except he goes from the birth to the ascension of Jesus. In chapters 8-12 he is not chronological.
Luke is more topical in his order.
We can trust the map because it is an accurate orderly account of Jesus and His life.
Luke is speaking for himself when he wrote his book, but when you study the other New Testament and Old Testament books, you see that they all fit together without contradiction.
The Bible was written over a 1,500 year span. It was written over 40 generations by over 40 authors from every walk of life from Kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, scholars, etc.
It was written in different places, on three continents. It was written in three languages, Hebrew, Greek and some Aramaic.
It covers 100’s of subjects and it has a central theme and flows together. It does not contradict itself! WOW!
If I had time I could go into the accuracy of predictive prophecy. In Isaiah 53 and following, he predicts over 400 years before Jesus came exactly what would happen to Him. Wherever the Bible can be proven, it ALWAYS has been proven true an accurate. I wish I could go into that today. Maybe another time.
WE CAN TRUST THE MAP BECAUSE OF:
III. THE PURPOSE THE MAP WAS MADE V 4
1. So that the exact truth could be known
Luke wrote his account so that Theophilus would know the EXACT truth about what he had been taught.
God does not want us to have to believe a bunch of wild stories; He wants us to know the truth.
God does not want us to just take an uninformed leap, He wants us to look at the evidence of scripture and then, follow Him. ROMANS 10:17 says, So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
God had the Bible written and He protected the integrity of it so that we can find Jesus.
God wants you to know the truth!
CONCLUSION
God did not hide Jesus so that we could not find Him. God gave us a road map to Jesus. It is called the Bible!
I gave you a lot today. I wanted to do that because I feel that if we are going to grow in Christ, we have to believe with 100% certainty that the Bible is the inspired word of God. By reading and studying the Bible, we can learn about Jesus and the love that He has for us.
It has been said in studies that 90% of the homes in the US have a Bible, but that less than 50% take time to read it.
Folks, there is a treasure waiting for you to grab, that treasure is Jesus, you will find Him in the Bible.
Jesus is the only way to live and He is the only way to die!
Today is your chance to claim the treasure of eternal life that God offers through Jesus. Will you come as we sing!
Next week will continue our journey with Jesus. I will bring a message I call “In The Beginning” from John 1:1-5.
