Can We Trust the Gospels?
(The Da Vinci Code – Part 1)
Various Scriptures
May 14, 2006
Introduction
Well, today we begin what I anticipate will be a four week series on the best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code.
I’ve been looking forward to this for awhile. And the main reason is that I always love opportunities to show that the truth of Scripture will always outlast attempts to try and discredit it.
But I want to make one thing perfectly clear: the purpose of these messages is not to crucify Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code. He’s getting enough of that in other places, and I don’t think it serves any purpose.
Rather, I think our hearts should be broken for him, and we should be praying that God would draw him to Jesus – the Jesus of the Bible.
One of the things the book has done is to cause people to ask questions, and that’s a good thing, in my opinion.
But as I’ve mentioned in previous messages, questions need to stem from an honest desire to find the answers rather than a cynical desire to find excuses to chuck the whole thing.
God promises answers to those who come to him with the right motives. He doesn’t always give us the answer we want or expected, or even give us the answer in our lifetime, but God’s not afraid of questions.
And folks, you have to understand that God is not threatened by this book, and we shouldn’t feel threatened, either.
So my goal through these messages isn’t to give you ammunition to “beat up” people who have read the book or see the movie and believe what they read or saw.
I’ve got two main goals for these messages:
My first goal is to give you some information and tools to use in reasoned discussions with people who care to talk with you about it.
The second goal is to help strengthen your own grips and encourage your faith in the Word of God, which is the primary goal of today’s message.
Upcoming Schedule of Messages, unless I decide otherwise:
5/21 – Who Was Jesus?
5/28 – Who Was Mary Magdelene?
6/4 – The Place of Popular Literature.
Before we get much further, I want to say that I have read the book, and found it quite interesting, in terms of a murder thriller.
I don’t believe any of its claims regarding Jesus and the Scriptures, but I have to admit the book was hard to put down. I’ll probably see the movie as well, for the sake of being able to discuss the way it portrays things as well.
Why bother with this series? After all, it’s a novel, not a theology book.
The main reason is because Dan Brown makes claims about the Bible and Jesus that he says are fact. And readers are eating it up.
Listen to this quote by British Justice Peter Smith, that I found on Foxnews.com:
"Merely because an author describes matters as being factually correct does not mean that they are factually correct. It is a way of blending fact and fiction together to create that well known model ’faction.’ The lure of apparent genuineness makes the books and the film more receptive to the readers/audiences. The danger of course is that the faction is all that large parts of the audience read, and they accept it as truth." (Foxnews.com - Impending ’Da Vinci Code’ Movie Release Spurs Religious Debate, May 1, 06.
Do you see why this is so important?
Note – the following paragraphs adapted from an article entitled, New Study Shows What Public Believes About “The Da Vinci Code,” by Ed Stetzer, posted at Pastors.com
A recent poll by Zogby International made a couple of findings of interest.
The first finding was that the more a person knew of the book, the more likely he or she was to consider the claims of The Da Vinci Code to be true, or to consider neither the book nor the Bible as “closer to the truth.” And since more and more people are about to be increasingly familiar with the book, this should be a cause for concern.
A second finding was that the more familiar a person was the content, the more likely they were to believe that Christianity is “suppressing the truth (about Jesus, Mary Magdelene’s marriage to Jesus, her role in the church, etc.)”
But the poll also found some good news. Here’s a question from the survey: The movie uses the tag line, “seek the truth.” Which book would you consider to be closer to the truth, The Da Vinci Code or The Bible?
The survey showed that 72% felt that the Bible was closer to the truth than the book.
But listen to this question: After reading or hearing about The Da Vinci Code, are you more or less likely to seek truth through studying the Bible?
Forty-four percent said they would be more like likely to do that. Only twenty percent said they would be less likely, while the other 37 percent said they were neither more or less likely to do that or were unsure.
Why do I bring this up? Because folks, we have an awesome opportunity to impact people who are open to learning about the God of Scripture!
We can’t afford to let this opportunity slide.
There are two possible extremes in response to the books, movies, etc. that challenge Christianity:
1. React emotionally with things like boycotts and religious ranting.
2. Ignore them completely.
Both of these are wrong, and only strengthen the impression that Christians are stupid, ignorant, blind followers of something they’re not smart enough to examine.
If you’ve been here for very long, you know that one of my little soapboxes is that we need to be people who love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We need to use the brain that God gave us. Christianity is a reasonable faith that reasonable, intelligent people can grasp and follow.
So what should be the proper response? You’ll have to come back in three weeks for that one!
Today’s message is going to be more of a history lesson than anything, as we look at the all-important question of whether or not we can trust the gospels.
And if you’re like most people, history is not one of your favorite subjects. It is one of mine, but I understand that not everyone shares that.
But before you tune me out before we even get going, I want you to look at your note-taking guide.
You will no doubt immediately notice that it takes up two whole pages. You will also no doubt begin to panic at the thought that my message will be two hours long, and you’ll be forced to eat warmed over food at the buffet.
But I want to point out that my message is about as long as normal – it’s just that the note-taking guide is a bit more plentiful regarding the information I want to share with you.
I also wanted you to see what I’m going to cover, because it’s a well-known fact that people can endure just about anything if they know it’ll end at some point...
As I mentioned, today I want to focus on the question, “Can we trust the gospels?”
Because if we can’t trust the gospels, then we’re in a lot of trouble. Our eternal destinies are staked on whether or not the words of the gospels are true.
If they’re not true, then we have no hope, and the Jesus that we have put our faith in is a lie.
So the intention of our time together now is to look at how we came to accept the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
I won’t be sharing much Scripture, because I want to focus on the historical evidence outside of Scripture for now.
There are two main questions that I want to address as we look at the bigger question of can we trust the Gospels, and you see them on your note-taking guide, but before we do that, I’d like to pray very quickly.
Here’s the first question I think we need to tackle:
How do we know we’ve got the “right” books?
Claims in TDVC:
“The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God.” (character Sir Leigh Teabing – p. 231)
2 Timothy 3 :16 –
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...
“More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament...The Bible, as we know it, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great” (Teabing – p. 231)
What I’m doing here is giving you the Reader’s Digest version of how the New Testament was formulated. There are literally thousands and thousands of pages written about how we got our New Testament, and particularly the four gospels.
But since I don’t want to drive you away forever, I’ve trimmed it down to these specifics. If you want to know more, you can go to the resources I’ve listed for you.
“Tests” for inclusion of New Testament books:
1. Written by an apostle or a known close associate of an apostle.
The Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew the apostle – the tax collector Jesus called to follow Him.
The gospel of Mark was written by Mark, an associate of Peter.
Luke was written by Luke, a close associate of Paul. He specifically mentions in his gospel that he had made a very careful examination of the life of Jesus and the information that was available to him as he wrote.
John was written by John the apostle.
The second test of a book for inclusion in the New Testament was its...
2. Date of writing – could it be refuted by those living during the events described?
The gospels in the New Testament were penned between the 70’s and 90’s AD, with the possibility that Mark could have actually been written in the late 50’s or early 60’s.
This is easily within the lifetimes of those who were eyewitnesses and participants of the gospels.
This would mean that there was plenty of opportunities for them to step forward and refute the gospels. But rather than do that, they died for what they contained – the message of the divine Son of God, Jesus Christ.
And here’s the third test:
3. Impact on the church – was it already being used by God in the lives of all the churches?
The job of the Councils wasn’t to pick and choose which books they wanted to include. Their job was to discuss which books were already recognized as having passed these three tests.
* What was the role of Constantine?
Constantine was incredibly influential, there is no doubt about it. He reigned as emperor during the last part of the third century into the fourth.
He converted to Christianity during his reign, and issued the famous Edict of Milan, also called the Edict of Toleration in which he declared freedom “to choose whatever religion he preferred.”
He was baptized just a few days before his death, because of the belief that baptism washed away all sins, and since it was unrepeatable, he felt that it was best that it be postponed until as near death as possible. (The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code, Richard Abanes)
But to answer the charge that Constantine collated the documents and decided which books would go in the New Testament, we need to look at what role he really did have. And the answer?
> He didn’t have one!
The “canon” of the New Testament (including the gospels) had already been decided 150-200 years before Constantine. The councils simply made the list “official.”
And this process of making the list official wasn’t finished until about 50 years after Constantine.
So to claim that Constantine had any role at all in the shaping of the New Testament, and especially that he “put it together” with the intent of promoting his agenda is simply false.
Let’s take a look at the second question we need to deal with in looking at how we can trust the gospels, and that is...
What about the “other” gospels?
“Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.” (Teabing – p. 234)
Four ways this can be disputed:
1. The Gnostic gospels (which are what
Brown is alluding to) focused more on the supernatural than the four gospels included in the Bible.
It’s a weird idea that the gospels in the Bible are seen by Dan Brown as denying His humanity.
The Bible describes Jesus’ hunger, fatigue, and even death; his emotional state – frustration, anger, and even crying; and his human relations with family, friends, and followers.
It’s the Gnostic gospels that over-spiritualize the issue, not the gospels in the Bible.
2. They were written after the gospels in the Bible, which is one of the reasons they were rejected.
The claim in The Da Vinci Code is that they were actually written before the gospels we have. But they were not, according to historians. Third...
3. They disagreed with the earlier Gospels which had already been accepted by Christians.
This is very important to understand. The gospels that we have in the Bible were universally accepted by the early church, and correlated with what they already knew about Jesus.
These other gospels, on the other hand, were in contradiction with them. And the Scriptures cannot contradict themselves, particularly regarding the person and character of God. And lastly...
4. They lacked authority since their authors were neither apostles nor closely associated with apostles.
This is important because, as I mentioned before, the gospels we have were written by credible sources.
Folks, the bottom line of all this that we can trust this Bible – from cover to cover, and everything in between.
It has stood the test of time and will still be changing lives waaaaaaay after anything you or I or Dan Brown will ever say or write.
Don’t be threatened by books like The Da Vinci Code or the movie. God will take care of all that. Just be ready to discuss them with those who are willing.
And if you’re not wanting to do that, then send them to me. I’d love to talk with them and help them find that the Scriptures are trustworthy, and that Jesus is trustworthy.
Conclusion
Well, let’s bring this in for a landing.
I’ve printed a rather lengthy quote from Dr. Scot McKnight, and I’d like to read it to you:
“I’ve become convinced that the problem with believing the Bible is not based on what we don’t understand about the Bible – but it’s based on what we do understand about the Bible.
“What we do understand challenges everything about us. Jesus calls us to follow him, and that means we have to give up our life. That, I think, is the major reason why people don’t want to believe in the Gospels, because it involves self-surrender, the hardest thing in life to do.” (Dr. Scot McKnight, Biblical scholar, professor of religious studies at North Park University, Chicago. Quoted in Exploring the Da Vinci Code, Lee Strobel and Garry Poole)
When it comes right down to it, that’s the issue, huh?
Many people simply refuse to believe in the Bible because it means they have to listen to the Word of God and make themselves accountable to it.
But you know what? This isn’t just hard for non-believers. It’s hard for believers, isn’t it?
My guess is that when I read that quote, some of you felt a prick in your own heart. Folks, that’s not me – that’s the Holy Spirit trying to tell you something.
He’s probably telling you that you’ve got an area in your life that you still need to submit to God.
If that’s the case, then don’t let it go – deal with God on this. Let Him have whatever it is. I don’t know what it is, but you do.
So as we pray, don’t worry about the words I’m saying. You deal with God, okay?
Folks, let me finish by saying this: you can trust God because you can trust the Bible. The God of the Bible is the God you can trust.
Don’t trust in the words of men – trust in the words of God. You won’t lose, I promise. And there are abundant treasures for you in them, if you’ll take the time to search them out.
Let’s pray.
