How Can I Trust the Bible?

Transcription

1 Slide 1 40 Days in the Word begins today! The next few weeks will change your life forever. Get involved in what God is doing at Tapestry in small groups. You will experience life changing change! Slide 2 How Can I Trust the Bible? The Bible is trustworthy because the Bible is true. It is God s message to us. Slide 3 2 Tim. 3:16-17 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. This verse means every word in the Word is there because God wanted it there.

2 Slide 4 [17] It is God's way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do. You cannot grow spiritually without the Word. Slide 5 Slide 6 1. It is historically accurate. Real people, real places, real time. As history is uncovered, the history of the Bible is confirmed. Every time. One of the greatest examples of that is an empire called the Hittites. There s this whole empire called the Hittites talked about in the Bible that was not talked about anywhere else. So for centuries historians said the Bible just made it up. Until the early 1900s a professor by the name of Hugo Winkler discovered at Bogazkoy ten thousand clay tablets at the capital of the Hittites. Now everyone believes in the Hittites. For example, for a long time historians said, we re not sure that guy named Solomon lived in the Old Testament and we re certainly sure he didn t have horses like it talked about. They only had camels back then. So that can t be right. Until at Megiddo, they discovered one of Solomon s chariot cities with thousands of stables for horses! So the Bible was proved right.

3 Slide 7 Hebrews 6:18 It is impossible for God to lie because God is truth. God never lies. People misunderstand the Bible people misrepresent it or misinterpret it but God message is true. Slide 8 2. The Bible is scientifically accurate. Yeah, that may shock a few people. But the Bible is always accurate and in line with good science. It always has been. Read on The Bible was not given to be a scientific textbook, obviously. You don t study the Bible to build a rocket. And the Bible doesn t use scientific language. Slide 9 The Bible never, never, never gives bad science. But the Bible never, never, never gives bad science. Not once in over sixteen hundred years in which this book was written, does it give bad science. In fact it is always ahead of science. There are things in the Bible, the Bible says were true, that we ve just discovered a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago.

4 Slide 10 Slide 11 Slide 12 Fifty-one Incontrovertible Proofs that the Bible is Scientifically Inaccurate. Isaiah 40:22 God is enthroned above the sphere on the earth. Job 26:7 God stretches the sky over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing. In 1861 here was a very famous book that came out called Fifty-one Incontrovertible Proofs that the Bible is Scientifically Inaccurate. It s a very famous book. Fifty-one incontrovertible scientific facts that we know, this is in 1861, that the Bible does not agree with and we know that the Bible is scientifically inaccurate. The only problem is today, a hundred fifty year later, you can t find a single scientist on the planet who would agree with any one of those incontrovertible facts. They have all been disproven by science. For instance, for thousands and thousands of years, people believed that the earth was flat. It wasn t until Copernicus and Galileo and Columbus that people realized the world s not flat, it s round. It s a sphere. It s a ball. So you would expect the Bible to say the earth is flat because it was in existence and being written during those thousands of years when everybody thought the earth was flat. Not a single verse in the Bible says the earth is flat. Isaiah stated the truth more than 2,600 years ago. Sphere? Space? This was written a long, long time ago

5 Slide We know we can trust the Bible because it is prophetically accurate. Slide 14 2 Peter 1:21 No prophecy ever originated from humans. Instead, it was given by the Holy Spirit as humans spoke under God s direction. There are over three hundred prophecies in the Bible about Jesus, the Messiah, up to a thousand years before he was born. And over a thousand year period, three hundred prophecies said things like, This is when he ll be born, this is where he ll be born, this is how he ll be born. You can t control that if you re trying to make yourself the Messiah. You didn t choose where you were born. This is how he ll die, the manner he ll die and what he ll die from. Over three hundred prophecies. What are the odds of me making three hundred predictions about you and every one of them coming true? The odds are so astronomical you couldn t write that number down. It takes more faith to believe it was all just a coincidence than to believe that God planned it. It takes enormous faith to believe it s all just random, that it all just happened, without a designer, without a creator. A thousand years before Jesus came and died on the cross, David in one of his psalms describes what death by crucifixion is like. He didn t use the word crucifixion because nobody knew that word. But a thousand years before the Romans are even thinking of crucifixion, David describes what the death of crucifixion was like. How did he know that? Only God could have told him.

6 Slide The Bible is trustworthy because is it is thematically unified. This book was written over one thousand six hundred years, from the first book to the last, by forty different authors, on three different continents, in three different languages, and they didn t know about each other. How do you think they all got the same story? It wasn t even collected in one book until a thousand years later after they d died, in the Old Testament. How do you think they knew that? Slide 16 John 5:39 You search the Scriptures because you believe they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! The story of the Bible is the story of Jesus. He is the central person in the story (His-story). Slide The fifth reason we can trust the Bible is because it s confirmed by Jesus. Jesus trusted the Bible. You may have heard somebody say, you may have even thought, I trust what Jesus said, I m just not so sure about those other guys. Here s the challenge to that: Jesus trusted the rest of the Bible. So if I trust Jesus then I have to trust the rest of the Bible, because Jesus trusted the rest of the Bible. Jesus proclaimed the Bible as a unique book above all others.

7 Slide 18 Matthew 5:18, Jesus said, I ll tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished! Jesus always expressed full confidence in God s Word. Always. Slide 19 In John 10:35 Jesus said Scripture is always true. Jesus believed it I believe him. Slide The Bible has survived all attacks. The Bible is the most attacked book in history and yet it is still the bestselling book of all time.

8 Slide 21 Mathew 24:35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Jesus said this he staked everything on it and so should we. Slide The Bible has transforming power. The Bible is the most powerful book in the world. It has power to change your life. Slide 23 Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. You are transformed by the truth. Get involved this week in a small group. Let the Word transform your life!