The Bible Is Full Of Mistakes Series

Urban Legends Part 2

The Bible is FULL OF MISTAKES

2 Tim 3:16, Mark 9:1-2, Luke 9:27-28, Matt 17:1, Isaiah 40:22 Heb 4:12

Introduction

A. I got a couple of very exciting emails this week. I don’t think we are going to have any worries that this financial recession is going to affect us here at Vineyard Community Church.

B. One email I got was from a Christian widow in Nigeria whose husband was a doctor and worked for an embassy. She said in her email that she wants to give several million dollars to a Christian cause because she is dying and childless and she heard of us from an unnamed acquaintance. I want to tell you the name of Vineyard Community Church is really getting around. I am trying to get a hold of the lawyer she told me to contact and it may cost us a few thousand dollars upfront, but that will be more than made up when we get the millions of dollars she is going to give us.

C. Not only that, but I received another email about Microsoft doing some email testing and they are going to send me a check for every person that I forward an email on to as well as money for every person that my friend forwards it on to.

D. Is this awesome or what? I am waiting on the checks now. From the looks on your faces, I would say some of you don’t believe me. Some of you saying, “Dave, you can’t believe everything you read! Those things are urban legends, myths, hoaxes. They aren’t true. There are no dying widows looking to give you millions and you aren’t going to be getting any money from Bill Gates. Don’t believe everything you read!”

E. I know you are right. But if we can’t believe everything we read, how do we make a determination about what we should believe? How do we know what we should believe or not? Now, this may not seem too important in regard to scam emails that have no bearing on our lives anyway, but should we believe the warning labels on medicine?

Safety precautions when dealing with electricity? Should we believe warnings we hear during inclement weather? I am sure all of you would say we need to trust those things, because they can have great bearing on our lives, so it is important that we learn to judge truth from legends and know the difference between things that matter and things that don’t.

F. Now, in the case of hoax emails, we can judge the truthfulness by a quick search on the internet of hoaxes. As it turns out Microsoft is not going to be sending us a check nor is this lady in Nigeria going to be giving us millions of dollars. They are hoaxes, legends.

G. Just like there are urban legends that just seem to never die and are passed around and believed by many, there are many urban legends that are believed about God, Jesus and Christianity. They are passed around without looking to find out if they are true or false. They seem to live on even though they are not true. Before passing them along it would be good to check into them to see if they are true. Today we are going to continue our semon series called “Urban Legends” as we look into another very popular ‘Urban Legend.’ This one is about the Bible. One I am sure you have all heard. It goes like this, “Why should I believe the Bible, it is full of mistakes” Anyone ever hear that or something like it? Yes, pretty popular belief, the question we want to ask today before we pass it around, is this true or false? We are going to start in 2 Tim 3:16 but before we do…

The Bible is a unique book 2 Timothy 3:16

A. The Bible is a unique book. Actually it’s a collection of sixty-six books written over a period of 1500 years by forty authors who were from thirteen countries on three separate continents (Asia, Europe, Africa). And it has been translated into about 1500 languages. Most attacked book, in history of world, berated, scrutinized, studied, and lied about yet it lives on. If it were just another religious book, with a collection of rules and regulations Satan probably wouldn’t be too bothered by it, but this is God’s book. It is amazing to me how people will continually attack this book, but no matter how much they attack it, the Bible still survives. No other book has been put to so much scrutiny and discussion. Still some people are convinced that it has mistakes in it and they deny its ultimate authority. People who have never read the Bible are told that the Bible is full of contradictions.