We opened up this message time by "writing" a story together. One student started the story with a single sentence, and then each student after that continued the story by adding one more sentence. I do not remember all of the details, but our story centered on a man named Bob who went to the grocery store. He ran over his son, who survived the hit but then was finished off by Bob with a knife. At first, he was conflicted about killing his son, then we wasn't conflicted at all, then he fled the scene into the woods, evaded the police, and ended up being declared a hero and got a parade somehow at the end of it all. It was a bizarre story with lots of sudden twists and turns, changes in motivation, and abrupt transitions. In total, there were twenty authors of this story, and it was written over a period of about 5 minutes.
Well, tonight we are talking about the Bible (in case you couldn't tell from the title). The Bible is the foundation of our knowledge about God, Jesus, and us. Without it, we would knew very little specifics about who God is and what He wants with us. Christianity teaches that the Bible is our source of absolute truth, and that we should base every aspect of our lives on what it says. That's a pretty bold teaching.
The problem that many people have with this is that they don't trust that the Bible is true. Some people think it is outdated, some think it is full of lies and mistakes, and some just don't like what it has to say. Well, I want to share with you some reasons why we can trust the Bible, to help you understand why we put so much trust in it and why we always refer to it for truth.
Firstly, let's see what the Bible has to say about itself.
John 17:17 - "Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth."
Luke 21:33 - "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away."
2 Timothy 3:16 - "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."
Isaiah 40:8 - "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever."
Psalm 119:105 - "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."
It claims to be true, that it will last forever, that it is breathed out by God and has many uses, and guides people on the right path. You know, our little story about Bob had 20 different authors and was written in a very short amount of time, and it had a lot of issues and consistency problems. The Bible, on the other hand, was written by over 40 different authors over a period of about 1,500 years. That's as if someone had started writing back in 520 AD and we just finished it now. Despite this large amount of time and variety of authors, the Bible has a very consistent message all the way through. It shares the story of how God made the world and interacted within it to bring about salvation through Jesus Christ, and it even contains a message concerning what God is going to do in the future.
There are around 2,500 prophecies in the Bible, and about 2,000 of them have already come true. The odds of this happening is less than one in 102000 (that's a one with 2,000 "0"s after it). The closest named number to this is Septingentillion. Another way to think about the size of this number would be write a "1" on a page, and then add "0"s until your hand was too tired to write anymore. It is an impossible number. This is one of the reasons why we trust the Bible so much as Christians, because it is literally impossible for this many prophecies about the future to have come true, UNLESS there was a God directing it all.
Another reason we trust it is simply its perseverance. Honestly, no other book has received so much hate and opposition. The Bible has proven to be indestructible. Over the last 2,000 years many attempts have been made to completely wipe out and destroy the Bible, and they all failed. There was one a Roman emperor who made a decree to the people that if they found a Bible, they had to burn it, and if they found someone in possession of a Bible, they had to kill them. By the end of his reign as emperor, he had killed so many Christians and burned so many Bible that he was convinced that he had rendered them extinct. And yet, only a few emperors later, Christianity was made the national religion. So much for destroying them all. Despite all of the persecution, God's Word lasted through it all, just like it claimed it would.
Science supports the Bible, archaeology supports the Bible, and even history supports the Bible! Every new discovery we have made in the scientific world has shown the Bible to be correct, not false. The Bible declared the earth was round long before Galileo. The Bible knew about ocean currents long before Matthew Maury discovered continental currents. The Bible even described the water cycle 1,500 years before modern science had figured it out.
These are all only a few of the many supporting factors which show us that the Bible is true and can be trusted. While many have tried to disprove the Bible, no one has succeeded in all these years.
This year we have already talked about the evidence for God and why we should believe in Him. Well, if God is real, then it is not hard to believe that He has been actively protecting and guiding the Bible all these years so that we could have a trustworthy source of truth. The Bible claims to be true, and all of the outside evidence supports that claim.
So, if the Bible is written by God and we can trust that what it says is true, then what does that mean for us now? The Bible has a lot to offer - it reveals who God is, it tells the story of our world and God's plan for the future, and it shows us how God wants us to live. The Bible should be our source of what is true, not our culture, not our friends, and not even modern science. When in doubt, we can turn to the Bible first and use it as our foundation for what is true. This way, when the world comes along and tries to tell us that it is okay to have sex with whomever we want outside of marriage, or that racism is okay, or that murder is good sometimes, or that money is all you need in life, we can look to the Bible and know that the world is wrong. Our culture is not always (or usually) right, the Bible is.
God has given us a trustworthy book that is full of knowledge about Him and what He wants for us. He has given us countless proofs that what it says is true, so that we will trust it no matter what. Most of you reading this right now probably haven't even read most of this book, and that needs to change. How can we claim to know and love God when we ignore the book He wrote for us?
Many of you probably also have a couple of ideas about how the world works and what is true that does not line up with what the Bible says. The challenge for you is to read the Bible, and change how you think to fit the truth. The Bible isn't just some dusty old book, it is a book full of life and truth, and through it we learn about Jesus and the salvation of our souls. It is the most important book we could ever read, and reading it is essential to being a Christian. So, read it. Know what God says in it. Hear what He has to say to you through it. Be transformed by His Words. One day, every one of us will die, but the Word of God will last forever.
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