Why Should I Trust The Bible? Series

- Voddie Baucham: “I choose to believe the Bible because it’s a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophesies & claimed that they writings were divine rather than human in origin.”

o We have 6000 NT manuscripts written only 25 yrs after the originals were written.

o One argument – Myth of overzealous monks who changed the Bible so it would match up & LOOK like we have these older manuscripts. These monks would have to go steal all the manuscripts, change 6000 of them the same way, lie the same way in each language, don’t show inkwork in doing so, and get them back where they stole them from without getting caught. Then do the same thing with all the commentaries by church leaders, which quoted the New Testament so often we can reproduce all but 11 verses with these commentaries alone.

- Dr. Jason Lisle, Christian astrophysicist: “The Bible is uniquely self-consistent and extraordinarily authentic. It has changed the lives of millions of people who have placed their faith in Christ. It has been confirmed countless times by archaeology and other sciences. It possesses divine insight into the nature of the universe and has made correct predictions about distant future events with perfect accuracy.” (https://answersingenesis.org/is-the-bible-true/how-do-we-know-that-the-bible-is-true/)

- Adrian Rogers: “The Bible is a supernatural, spiritual, sovereign, surviving, sustaining, super-charged book about my Savior.”

When we consider the verses that we are looking at today, we see:

THERE IS NO OTHER BOOK THAT IS “GOD-BREATHED” LIKE THE BIBLE IS – 2 Timothy 3:16a

“breathed out by God” (ESV) “God-breathed” (NIV) “inspired by God” (CSB) “given by inspiration of God” (KJV)

- Faulkner’s words not “God-breathed”…John Grisham’s…Mark Twain’s…Shakespeare’s…Hemingway’s…

What does it mean that the Bible is “God-breathed” or “Inspired by God”? Notice that Paul didn’t’ say the writers of Scripture were inspired, but that the Scriptures themselves are inspired by God.

- The very breath of God is in the words of this book.

- God oversaw the entire process of the writing of the Bible by choosing the authors & guiding them to write exactly what He wanted them to say w/out error.

- Used their minds, talents, language, style, but wrote exactly what God wanted them to write as His Spirit guided them.

o Paul different than James…Peter different than John…David different than Moses…Solomon different than Daniel

- Bible is completely trustworthy b/c God was in control of its writing. Its words are completely authoritative for our faith & life.

- “inspiration” – “…the supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit on the Bible’s writers, which guaranteed that what they wrote was accurate & trustworthy.” (Wiersbe)

“Breath of fresh air” – Bible is a breath of fresh air to us b/c it’s GOD’S breath. Brings excitement, joy, peace, comfort, inspiration.