Why Believe the Bible

Kobe was praying before and asking God to reveal His word to us. This morning, we are beginning with a new Bible translation, a version, the English Standard Version, moving on from our New International Version. And I thought it would be a good time for us to just reflect again on why we believe in the Bible. Why we believe in the Bible. Now, could we mention this word, God's word?

And we have to ask the question, what does that mean? We have to ask questions like, is it reliable? I'm sure that you've probably spoken to many people in the workplace or at school or at university. One of the questions has been, why or how can I rely on the Bible? Is it something that I can stake my life on like you are seemingly doing?

So we're going to have a look at that this morning. Why should I believe that the Bible is God's word? Now, first of all, the Bible makes a claim that it is God's message, God's communication, God's word to a lost humanity. Second Peter one, verses 20 to 21, it says there's no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

In other words, what the Bible is is not man-made, it is made by God. And God inspired, God carried along these writers to produce it, to give it to us, to pass it on to us. So the Bible itself is starting to claim something here. The Bible is saying that it is a word from God. It is a message from God.

Second Timothy three, verses 16 and 17 is also a very significant text on this. Second Timothy three 16 says this: all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. All Scripture, all that we hold as sacred, is breathed out by God. Our older version says, God breathed and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. So first of all, the Bible itself claims about itself that it is inspired by God.

That is where we get our English word for inspiration from: to be breathed into, inspiration. The Bible is inspired by God. God took some 40 human writers and He led them in their work in such a way as to make sure that they wrote exactly what He intended them to write. Isaiah also writes something along the lines of that God's word goes out into the world.

It will not return to Him void or empty, but it will go about to accomplish everything that He has intended. God breathes His words into the hearts of men who write it down. Now, in a wonderful way, the Bible is not uniform. It is united, but it is not uniform. In a wonderful way, God uses the personalities of these over 40 different authors, and you can pick up the Gospel of John and you can read it and you can think, this is so different to the Gospel of Matthew.

Or you can go to the letters of Paul and read his amazing logical explanation of things, and then you can go to the passionate writing of First Peter. And the emotion of Peter comes out through it. And so, while they are achieving God's purposes, God doesn't override their personalities. God uses and He breathes into their character. It's wonderful, but God inspires all of these individuals through their personality to write or to communicate exactly what God wants to communicate.

Now, the Bible itself claims that it is the word of God, written by human authors who were used by God to write it. Now, the question that you may ask and that I definitely ask myself: isn't that a circular argument? The Bible says it is the word of God, so believe it because it is the word of God because it says it is the word of God. But perhaps that is not convincing at the outset, but I want us to remember, first of all, this very important thing: that we adhere to the Bible because we believe it is God's word inspired by God, communicated by God perfectly to us. And by the end of this sermon, hopefully, you'll understand why I do believe that it is God's word, first and foremost.

If the claim that the Bible is God's word from itself is not strong enough for you, your next question might be, what if the Bible is lying about this claim amongst other claims? What if it's just doing this circular argument, that the Bible says believe it because the Bible says we need to believe it? The next question we have to deal with then is one of transmission. In other words, even if the writers originally were writing down God's words, even though they may have been inspired in that moment to write by Him, how do we know that we have now what was written back then? Hasn't there been many copies that have been written in?

And isn't it possible that these copies got diluted or changed or altered in some way? How do we trust that what we have now is God's word? So the question is, do we have the original 66 books of the Bible? The answer is no, we don't. Now, this used to really bother me when I was growing up.

When I was at Bible College itself, working through these questions. And at Bible College, you get hit by a lot of critical questions. You don't have to be a Christian to be a Biblical scholar. So there are scholars who don't believe that the Bible is God's word. So there are lots of critical writers regarding the weight of God's word.

Now, that bothered me, but let me try and help and explain to you how it shouldn't. When we look at the New Testament, which forms the crux of the Christian message, those 27 books of the New Testament. We want to know what lies at the heart of Christianity. That is where we find the New Testament. The claim of the Bible is that Jesus Christ came to earth around zero AD, or more accurately, around the year zero.

The claim of the Bible is that around 30 AD, some say 27 AD, some say 33 AD, but around 30 AD, Jesus Christ died and three days later, again, He was raised to life. That is the crux of the New Testament. The Gospels lead up to it. Paul and Peter and the other apostles and their writings flow out of that. You could argue that the Old Testament leads up to that as well.

Now, that is the crux of the Christian Bible. Is it worth believing? Has that message, has that accuracy, that so-called historical event, really happened, and has that come to us accurately? Now, before we get to that, as a way of comparison, here are some historical writings, historical figures from the earliest times in our history that has existed, and we hold them to be true as well. We believe that a man by the name of Mohammed existed from 570 to 632 AD, Mohammed who founded Islam.

Now, his first account of his existence, the first biography, which is called the Hadith, was written 125 years after his life. Siddhartha Gautama, who is now more famously known as the Buddha, he existed actually before Christ, around April to March. The first records about him, however, came 350 years after his death. Alexander the Great, a great Greek warlord and emperor. The first remaining records of his life has come to us 120 years after his death, but the best records, the ones that scholars put the most faith in, is about 400 years after his life or his death.

And then, specifically as a way of comparison, a man by the name of Tiberius who was Roman emperor during the time of Jesus, from AD 14 to AD 37. The first historical document that we have about him is dated to about 77 years after his life and death. Now, that is pretty good. Historians are pretty happy when they can find something that close. So what we have about Tiberius, we have a fair degree of belief in.

Now, Australian Biblical scholar and historian, some of you may have heard of him, he actually spoke at a church here a few years ago by the name of John Dickson, writes that the New Testament in comparison to this can be held with such a great degree of historical significance because we have the latest, the last recording of Jesus by what scholars predict to be the Gospel of John, written about 90 AD. The last record of Jesus, the latest one, was written 65 years after. The earliest record of Jesus by probably the Gospel of Mark, 25 years after Jesus' death and resurrection. This is what he has to say about it. He says, all of our New Testament documents were written at least within 65 years of Jesus, and some within 20 years.

He says, now, I don't know if that sounds impressive to you, but for historians, this is marvellous. The last New Testament text, the one written at the very end of this 65 years, is the Gospel of John. They reckon it was written in the nineties AD, about 65 years after Jesus. That's the latest. That's the biggest gap in the New Testament.

But that biggest time gap in the New Testament is still closer in time than our very best source for the emperor of the time, Tiberius, who many believed actually existed and did exactly what those documents claim. Says it's only 65 years before we have the very last New Testament reference to Jesus. So why do I have confidence in the Bible being accurately transmitted or communicated from those times? Because from the earliest, we see the examples of the New Testament being regarded as very, very special, as sacred. And sacred documents were carefully copied. They were spread around carefully and well guarded and well preserved.

This is what we have about the New Testament. We find today that there are over 24,000 copies of the New Testament. 24,000. Compared to Homer's Iliad, which is also a significant ancient document, today we only have 600 copies of that manuscript. And we believe that Homer's Iliad, the full work, is what he wrote because it is so well attested at 600 manuscripts.

Today, we have 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament. When we take all of those copies and we compare them to one another to see if they actually line up and whether they actually say the right thing or whether people have started adjusting things or trying to change theology that doesn't quite sit right with them or whatever, the difference between them equates to about 1%. 1% difference. 99% the same. It comes down to 400 words in all of them different.

And none of those 400 words actually make a significant difference to the meaning of the text. Now, we have similar reasons to accept the trustworthiness of the Old Testament too. Archaeology has increasingly shown support for the Bible. While the Old Testament is far older than the New, and many people have written it off because we have less manuscript evidence, archaeology nowadays is showing more and more that it is reliable. We found 25,000 different archaeological sites, not found before, not written down before apart from the Bible, that corroborate what has been said in the Old Testament.

In 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, which was absolutely massive for Old Testament studies. In one of these caves found in Israel in 1947, an entire scroll of Isaiah was discovered. The entire 60-odd chapters. And it dated something like 200 or 300 years before the earliest copy we had before that.

So it was a massive discovery. They unrolled the entire thing and then started comparing it with what we have now. You know what? No difference. No difference.

How significant then is that to think, when we have in Isaiah so many allusions to Jesus Christ coming? Isaiah 53, the suffering servant. Now, people have said no. That was written back after they heard about Jesus. They wrote that because it's so accurate.

It's so Him. They wrote that into Isaiah. Isaiah 53 has been there for hundreds of years before Jesus. Of course, throughout hundreds and hundreds of years, the words between the Old Testament and the New Testament were never changed. Okay.

So that's point two. The Bible's claim is supported by external evidence, manuscript evidence, physical hard evidence. But we may be satisfied that it's historically accurate, that it may be accurately representing the authors' writing, but this next question is, is it true? Is it true?

Did the authors' original writing represent what is real? For instance, I may have an accurate copy and a translation of the writings of Mohammed today from the Quran, but that doesn't validate his claims. As a Christian, I definitely say that doesn't validate his claims. I choose the Bible's claims over the Quran's claims. Why?

Because the third point I'm going to explain is that the Bible itself and its message is cohesive. It communicates one point over many, many hundreds of years. So we find that there is external evidence. Now we come to the internal evidence that agrees with itself. The Bible is a book like no other. It is comprised of 66 books compiled over 1,500 years by over 40 authors from all walks of life.

Think of them all: Moses and David and Peter and Paul and John and Jonah, all different walks of life. Some farmers, some priests, some kings, some fishermen. Wow. It contains many different kinds of literature: poetry, narrative, and apocalyptic literature. It was comprised of or it came out of many different places at different times during different moods, during times of war, during times of peace, when spirituality and spiritual zeal was great and high and people loved God, and when times were bad and people had walked away from God.

It's written in three different languages: Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic. And it is full of controversial topics that make people's eyebrows raise then as well as it does now. And despite all that, despite all those different components, its one message is this: that there is a God who created this world and a humanity in it that He's about to redeem, that He's in the process of redeeming. A story from creation through to adoption of the nation of Israel, a people group through which God would reveal Himself to all nations. Israel becomes the people group by which God would show Himself to the world, but also through which the Messiah would come, Jesus Christ.

When Jesus Christ comes, He is the tip of the spear, the people of Israel at their best, but from there it explodes into the world. And Gentiles are invited in. Non-Jews are invited and brought into this great redemption which God promised in Genesis 3. It is a story of how God is busy recreating His lost world through hundreds of generations. The amazing thing for me is that the Bible stays cohesive and unified throughout all these years.

And it doesn't make it easy for itself because it makes some ludicrous claims. It sets itself up for potential failure by making things like predictions of what will happen in the future, things called prophecy. Even then, it doesn't fail. The fact that God would have people write these predictions and then that they come true helps verify the internal evidence, the internal cohesion, that these books are more than written by men, more than written by people from all different eras. When you look for just the prophecies about Jesus alone, over 300 predictions of Him in the Old Testament come true, and that's a conservative estimate.

300 predictions of the Messiah fulfilled by Jesus. All of these prophecies, remember, at least 400 years before Him. That's the very last Old Testament book when it was written, 400 years before Jesus. Some of them go much further back than that. Now, these couldn't have happened by accident either, that somehow there was just a man born in Galilee, was predicted already in Isaiah, born in a place called Bethlehem, was predicted by Isaiah.

All of these things, you know, couldn't have just happened by accident. Or people have tried to work out what the chances would be for one man to be born and to have these things fall into place like that. And a statistician worked out, I've forgotten what his name was, the probability of it all coinciding together like that, and he said the probability is like you going to the state of Texas in America, the biggest state there is. The state itself is filled about a foot high with one dollar coins, US coins, across the whole state. And you're going to a random spot in Texas, picking up a one dollar coin, and that being the right one. The probability is astronomical that these 300 prophecies conservatively all fulfilled by Jesus at this one time if it just was by chance.

For me, the internal cohesion of the Bible, that God had a plan from Genesis all the way through to Jesus, all the way through to Revelation, is persuasive evidence that the writers of the Old Testament, having come from so many different backgrounds, wrote by the inspiration of one God and they weren't writing their own ideas. This is no ordinary book. This is the word of God breathed by Him. And we're getting towards the end. You may say this is all well and good.

We understand the claims the Bible makes about itself, that it is breathed and inspired by God. There is external evidence, manuscripts that historians, whether they're Christian or not, believe reflect a historical Jesus and a historical church. Internal cohesion that talks about a story that spans throughout generations. Now, this is all well and good, and it may be persuasive for me and perhaps for you, but for many people, the bigger question in their hearts, if you were to try and communicate this to them, is actually this question about the Bible. Does it work?

Does the Bible make a difference? Is the Bible real in the sense that it speaks to my needs? Is it real in the way that it addresses my challenges? Can I use it to direct my life actually? That is the big question.

Our last point is that the Bible's claims are supported by changed lives, by us. We are the evidence. This is where we need to not only allow ourselves to read the Bible, but let the Bible read us. Because those who claim to believe in the Bible also have lives that are radically changed, that have been radically changed. Hebrews 4:12 says this: the word of God is living and active.

It is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. It changes us. Now, if it's true, then I ought to be able to point to places where the Bible has left a work behind or left a mark behind. Has it? Well, let me just say three things about that.

First, let's have a look at history. Arguably, no other single world movement had greater impact on history than Christianity. Along with that, no book has outsold the Bible. No greater number of people have given their lives for the sake of another book like the Bible. In the early Roman period, thousands of martyrs accepted it and it sent them to their death.

And when you study into the very roots and the fabric of Western civilisation, Western governance, and law, things are the way they are because godly men and women were designing it based on their understanding of the Bible. We only need to look at the history of 2,000 years and we can see that there is a change. There is an influence. Secondly, look around you. There are people here to your left and to your right, behind you and in front of you whose lives have been changed by this message.

The Bible's message changes lives. There was a man by the name of Henry Ironside, and I believe this story is true, who was preaching a lot a long time ago at the start of the twentieth century. And a heckler shouted out as he was preaching, "Atheism has done more for the world than Christianity." Ironside said to the man, "Very well, tomorrow night, you bring a hundred men whose lives have been changed for the better by atheism, and I'll bring a hundred who have been transformed by Christ." The man never showed.

Think about it. Those who debate, those who talk on Q and A, all those academic speculations or philosophies, they can all be good and well. And we can speculate as much as we want about how a world devoid of religion, including Christianity, could be, would be far more peaceful. But look at the people sitting here. Look at the Christians that you know overseas or interstate, and look at their lives and their stories, and tell me that it is not transformational, this message.

Speculation and debate is one thing, but these people and their lives are real, and the change has been real. Look around you and see how the Bible makes its marks in the lives of people right here and now. Thirdly, listen to others. When the Bible is preached, when it is read, when it is applied, it changes people. If you ever find yourself doubting the Bible, go and speak to someone and ask them if they can point to a time where it changed their lives and how.

Someone once told a reformed alcoholic, a recovering alcoholic, that his experience of the Bible and of God was invalid, that his faith was a delusion. He said to him in response, "Thank God then for this delusion because it has put clothes on my children, it has put shoes on their feet, it has put bread in their mouths. It has made a man of me and it has put joy and peace in my home which had been a hell. If this is a delusion, may God send it to the slaves of alcohol everywhere, for their slavery is an awful reality." After you've looked around this morning at the people here, speak to them.

Listen to them, hear their stories. Each one, in some way, if they reflect deeply enough, will be able to tell you how Jesus changed their lives. The message of Jesus is found in this book. Every one of them is a story of the Christian experience. The point of listening is this: there are people from every race.

There are people also from every walk of life who bear a testimony to a similar saving, delivering experience of Jesus. And then I want to end with this. Don't let it be the last you do. Try it yourself. Believe it yourself.

Does the Bible work? Is the Bible real? Does its message change my life? Does it speak to my needs? Does it, in a real way, address life's challenges?

Yes, it does. So this morning, I want to encourage you by this word also from the Bible itself, Psalm 34:8. Come and taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste Him, experience Him through His word, and see that He is good.

So this morning, we don't invite you to come and worship this. This is nothing. This is paper and ink. Come and worship the God who is behind this. Worship the God who breathed His message, His love into it, and through His Spirit who makes it alive to us.

Be encouraged this morning that what we believe in is worth believing. It holds true. It stacks up. And whoever doubts, let your life, changed and transformed by its message, be the greatest testimony of its truth. Let's pray.

Father, these ancient words, long preserved for our walk in this world. They resound with Your own heart. Oh Lord, so let us come and hear these ancient words of God. We ask, Lord, that You will impart these words into the very deepest parts of our souls. God, that we will find comfort and confidence in what we believe, in who we can trust, in why we can trust.

Lord, that there is a part that is always going to be bound up in faith, but this faith has something behind it. Lord, I pray that we will find our greatest comfort in the truth of Jesus Christ, the centrepiece of this great work, that in Him there is freedom, forgiveness, salvation to everyone who is willing to come in here and bow in worship and adoration of this great news. In His name, through His word, by the power of the Spirit, we pray. Amen.