Why We Believe the Bible, Part 1

thank you so much for being a part of this I love to talk about the scriptures especially love to talk about what they mean and when I must I love to talk about why we believe they're true I would rather talk about what they mean which is what I do week after week but from time to time it's really important I think to step back and every Christian asked himself the question ok I'm staking my eternity on this why so that's what we're doing here and it's really really significant to ask that question the law

of the Lord is perfect reviving the soul the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple the precepts of the Lord are right rejoicing the heart the commandments of the Lord are pure enlightening the eyes the fear of the Lord is clean enduring forever the rules or ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether more to be desired are they than gold even much fine gold sweeter also than honey and drippings from the honeycomb moreover by them is your servant warned and in keeping them there is great reward how blessed is the

man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night and therefore he's like a tree planted by streams of water it's leaf does not wither in everything he does he prospers it is not so with the wicked they're like chaff that get blown away therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord knows

the way of the righteous but the way the wicked will perish so father I pray that this precious word that gives life that gives joy that gives illumination that lasts forever that is more valuable than all gold combined that is sweeter than honey in all sweets that makes us when we root ourselves in it like trees that can't get blown over in the winds of adversity I pray that your word would vindicate itself so draw near and help me I'm just a sinful man what can I do to add anything by way of authority or

truth or power to the living and abiding word of God all I can do is try to point to what's there faithfully so help me I pray in Jesus name Amen the outline of the course has seven steps to it I hope we get through all of them I've never succeeded but I'm gonna really try hard because of this is being filmed and I want it to work for you and for everybody step 1 why are we concerned about it what's it matter whether the Bible is true number 2 which books make up the Bible

why are these 66 books the ones and not say the Apocrypha that are in the Catholic Bible step 3 do we have the very words of Scripture that the Apostles and the prophets wrote or is Bart Ehrman right in his book misquoting Jesus step for what does the Bible claim for itself and we're only going to focus on Jesus there we could talk about huge amounts of other self claims from the prophets and apostles but we'll focus on Jesus because he sweeps this the whole Bible in his comments and then the most important step probably

is number five how can we justify the claim that the Bible makes for itself and then six what's the nature of the inerrancy or the authority of the inspiration or the infallibility that we claim what what do we mean by that and then finally if there's time how then shall we handle the Bible that's where we're going so step one why are we concerned about this so that's what I have here step one is that we as a church Bethlehem and probably the churches you come from have affirmations of faith that claim things like this

we believe that the Bible consisting of the 66 books of the Old and New Testament is in is the infallible Word of God verbally inspired by God and without error in the original manuscripts that's from the elder affirmation of faith at Bethlehem it goes on like this we believe that God's intentions reveal in the Bible are the supreme and final authority in testing all claims about what is true and what is right in matters not addressed by the Bible what is true and right is assessed by criteria consistent with the teachings of Scripture that's really

important it goes on like this we believe God's intentions are revealed through the intentions of inspired human authors even when the author's intention was to express divine meaning of which they were not fully aware as for example in the case of some Old Testament prophecies thus the meaning of biblical text is a fixed historical reality rooted in the historical unchangeable intentions of its divine and human authors however while meaning does not change the application of that meaning does change the application of that meaning may change in various situations nevertheless it is not legitimate to infer

a meaning from a biblical text that is not demonstrably carried by the words which God inspired if you come to me and tell me that you know the meaning of a text because God told you this morning in your devotions I will pay no attention to you unless that leads you to see something in the Bible that I can also see and then I'll listen but if you pull rank on me and do it in run around the words and the meanings of the words to say I got a message about this text I won't

buy that's what's implied in that I think we honor the Holy Spirit and his inspiring work when we treat the Bible that way it goes on like this therefore the process of discovering the intention of the Bible of God in the Bible which is its fullest meaning is a humble and careful effort to find in the language of Scripture what the human authors intended to communicate limited abilities traditional biases personal sin cultural assumptions often obscure biblical texts therefore the work of the Holy Spirit is essential for right understanding of the Bible and prayer for his

assistance belongs to a proper effort to understand and apply God's Word so the first reason for why we take this topic up is because I am serving a church whose elders ascribe by signing it those affirmations and we should know why we believe it you just make it up and so from my own conscience sake I need to give an account for why that is something I ascribe to a second reason and I won't go into these I'll just point to them we'll read them the evangelical tradition that goes back Westminster Confession teaches catechism the

evangelical theological Society has a statement about inerrancy the laws on Coventry four years old because laws on my dad went to the 1974 Lausanne conference in Lausanne Switzerland the first major laws on missions conference at which epoch making things happened and the next one is in 2010 and I'm going there in fact I've been asked to speak at it which is an incredible privilege to me I kind of vibrate with the excitement that I can be a part of the 100th anniversary of the Edinburgh missions conference which we celebrated in South Africa and this conference

I just said to doug Birdsall the head of that conference on the phone yesterday i said you know in my judgment the greatest thing that came out of Lausanne 74 was its affirmation of faith and we agreed along with a couple of other things and it has a strong statement on the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible for which I'm deeply thankful and then there's the Chicago a statement on biblical inerrancy from nine in 78 there was this big hoopla when I was in school to the effect that the Bible wasn't inerrant and there was

a great deal of writing about it in the Chicago conference on inerrancy came together and produced a very good statement you can get that online just type in Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy it's a full and helpful word so that's number two number one we have a church affirmation that affirms it number two the the wider evangelical historical movement has affirmed the inerrancy of the Bible so does the Roman Catholic Church in fact the church has affirmed this for almost 2,000 years as long as the Bible has existed this has been the understanding of what

it is here's reason number three for tackling this issue many in our day denied the existence of just truth not not just a Bible truth there's a quote from Michael Novak which I found provocative and I read it thirteen years ago still true today there is no such thing as truth they teach even the little ones truth is bondage believe what seems right to you there are as many truths as there are individuals follow your feelings do as you please get in touch with yourself do what feels comfortable those who speak this way prepare the

jail's of the 21st century they do the work of tyrants I wonder if you understand why he said that if you if you feel the immediacy of the rightness of that conclusion about truth deniers they prepare the jail's of the 21st century they do the work of tyrants why here's why if there is no absolute truth functioning as the arbiter that two people in an argument with there can appeal to there's only one appeal left power and therefore might will make right and that's the definition of a tyrant there is no alternative you better hope

that all those loosey-goosey mushy Christians that talk in vague hazy terms about propositions being old-fashioned enlightenment ways of doing truth better not carry the day they prepare the jails that tyrants will put you in when you claim that it's wrong to put me there for just believing what I believe and they will say who are you to say what's right and wrong what's right to me is right to me and I've got the sword you don't want to go there don't play students in the university with epistemology don't play games with epistemology huge things are

at stake in how you view whether there is such a thing as truth or not we're not playing games this pays a price Oh No if you have to know two centuries of history if you have to know two centuries of history no the first and no the twentieth know Christ and no the Gulag no Hitler no Mussolini no Stalin don't be ignorant of what price has been paid for those who think they can call the shots without submitting to any absolute truth know at least two centuries because the 20th was the worst and the

first introduced the best so the third reason why we're taking this up is because underneath it is an assumption namely there is such a thing as truth and the Bible contains it but you need to know that there are many people many hundreds of thousands of people in our day who scoff at that notion that there is such a thing as truth fourth reason why this is important one trait of secularism is the criticism of the Bible as a mixture of truth and error here's one of the most radical statements I've ever read in the

Minneapolis star-tribune and they are pretty common one of the few worthwhile statements in the Bible is you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free knowledge of the Bible is hindered by the informal censorship imposed by religious leaders who would rather their followers didn't know what's in it the innumerable contradictions historical errors plagiarism absurdities meaningless prophecies myths represented as historical fact countless instances of divinely ordered or approved atrocities it is true that the Bible has some worthwhile material including entertaining stories inspirational sentiments and absolute and astute observations about human behavior however those

worthwhile parts could probably be contained in a pamphlet I didn't like that when I really and I wrote them my letters to the Tribune don't get anywhere five competing holy books of other religions are increasingly close if I'd been given this seminar 25 years ago I wouldn't probably have included this reason and we all knew the Quran existed Hindu scriptures exist and but way far away not anymore Kenneth Craig contemporary trends in Islam Islam is essentially fundamentalist in a way that the biblical Christian faith could never properly be for the Quran is understood as the

abscissa moverá that's the latin phrase for the very words of God himself given in the in tanzeel the sending down to Muhammad in Arabic so God spoke Arabic to Muhammad and he wrote them down as transcribing of the divine book in heaven now what makes that so interesting read this is this comment about this is from Andrew walls Christianity in the non-western world Andrew walls is one of the most perceptive missiological spokesmen in our day he's retired professor at university burrow Christian faith must go on being translated must continuously enter into the vernacular culture and

interact with it pause he's contrasting the Christian scriptures with the Quran because the Quran may not be translated with any authority if it goes out of Arabic it's not authoritative anymore because you can't really understand it unless you read the Arabic because God spoke the Arabic and it dropped into history straight out of heaven with God's own language however the Bible is very different he's arguing Islamic absolutes are fixed in a particular language in the condition of a particular period of human history the divine word is the qur´an fixed in heaven forever in arabic the

language of the original revelation nobody claims that God speaks Hebrew or Greek or English or French or German speaks every language but that's not the way you think about the Bible the divine word is the qur´an fixed in heaven forever in Arabic the language of original revelation for Christians however the divine word is translatable infinitely translatable the very words of Christ himself were transmitted in translated form in the earliest documents that we have Christ probably spoke in Aramaic not Greek and the first Gospels are in Greek not Aramaic so the very beginning of the inspired

scripture was a translation much misunderstanding that I'll skip something let's go back up the very words of Christ Himself were transmitted in translated form in the earliest documents we have a fact surely inseparable from the conviction that in Christ God's own self revelation God himself was translated into human form much misunderstanding between turist between Christians and Muslims has arisen from the assumption that the Koran is for Muslims that the Bible is for Christians this is profound listen to this it would be true or to say that the Koran is for Muslims what Christ is for

Christians that's very provocative the Quran dropped out of heaven and became a human book and Christ dropped out of heaven and became a human being the Bible is the inspired record of that and is infinitely translatable the point in that is simply that in our day the Bible is certainly going to be challenged as not being the only holy book one should pay attention to hence the need for a seminar like this and reflection of this kind sixth reason one trait of liberal Christianity is the rejection of the infallibility of the Bible and call for

us to find a Canon within a Canon can and within a can in other words this is the Canon the Protestant Canon the 66 books closed you don't add anything to it and liberalism says you can't believe all of this there's some of this that is simply unbelievable mythological and what you find is within the Canon a Canon and and different liberals have different canons within the Canon to judge what you can accept and what you can't accept like love or brotherhood of man or Fatherhood of God things like that I went to a seminar

with Nck Zaman he was one of the big German scholars in the 50s and 60s and 70s lived to be a very old man and he wrote this which is typical of radical liberal New Testament scholarship the scripture which one gives over to itself and to which one gives himself up uncritically without the principal key leads not only to a multiplicity of confessions but also to the inability to distinguish between faith and superstition the father of Jesus Christ and the idol in other words if you give yourself wholly to the Bible as a whole without

making distinctions in it you will wind up in a situation where you can't distinguish faith from superstition does the New Testament Canon establish the unity of the church no it the Canon establishes also a variety of christologies which are in part incompatible the Canon as such also legitimates more or less all sects and false doctrines what he's saying very simply is this book this New Testament if you take it as it is without making distinctions of what you can accept and what you can't what you have is a book that gives warrant to all sects

all heresies all christologies because they're all here then they contradict each other so this is not the ground of the unity of the church it's the ground of the disunity of the church as we find it and the only way to handle a book that grounds disunity is to accept some parts of it and not other parts that's it's the case I'm on that's liberalism right across the board I had lunch there's a pastor in the city here there's lots of them but I was especially bent out of shape by one because of a sermon

of his on the web and I called him up and I asked him if we could do lunch this guy is the most liberal pastor probably in the state of Minnesota at least that's what he would claim and so we went to Baker Square over by the University and I wanted to meet a real live radical liberal who who call himself a Christian and didn't believe anything I believed and there he was sitting across the table and and I began to just ask him questions heaven hell deity of Christ his face in the Bible no

no no and and I I gave him a text in particular from acts 13:48 as many as were four ordained eternal life believed as many worth and said it seems to me that some Jews believed and some Jews didn't and the implication is some are lost and some are saved he got really upset because he was arguing that everybody saved goes the Jewish way go the Muslim way go the Christian way we have our Christian Way we should stay to it be faithful to it but others are okay and I said I just I finally

I just kind of threw up my hand said I just don't see how you can call yourself a Christian you don't say that to one of the most prominent pastors in the city's big church downtown you don't have to guess which one it is he's still here and and he got very upset with me they're innocent he said well I'm very offended by that I would assume you are I just I just can't believe it so I I there was my experience and and that was that so I'm not I'm not just you know quoting

Kay Zaman from far away Germany thirty years ago this is mr. blank forget when that meal was two three years ago that we did that and he's still there I mean our city has dozens of pastors who are who would just as soon take their texts on a Sunday morning from an American poet as from the scriptures in fact he told me over that meal my people are on my case to take more Sunday morning texts from and I wish I could remember the specific poet who's one of the most famous you know who's one

most famous American woman poets who wrote little short poems what look that's right Emily Dickinson that right okay one of them that's close enough and and he said but I usually take my text from the Bible well that's good I'm glad you there it's very sad and very real here we are I wrote this today is not old because stuffs happening all the time in every generation we're still on number six there are new creative attacks on the trustworthiness of the Bible in our day Bart Ehrman leads the pack in trying to discredit the reliability

of the bimple text his his claim is that the new testament has been corrupted by copyists so badly it can't be recovered his newest book here 2007 misquoting Jesus the story behind who changed the Bible and why a couple of his books here Erman and others as you know with the Gospels that are popping out here and there have also argued that there are other Gospels beside our own that show alternative Christianity's that are as valid as the traditional one so the lost gospel of judas iscariot and alain pad jewels beyond belief the secret gospel

of thomas and i would just point you right here this is a brand new response by Darrell Bock dethroning Jesus exposing popular cultures quest to unseat the biblical Christ so if you wanna write off for the front burner careful scholarly yet readable response to the Bart Ehrman type attacks then go to Darrell Bock dethroning Jesus so very relevant very up-to-date I have other if you want to look at these at any time I've got a list of books on the reliability of the New Testament of a more contemporary kind and and responses to Ehrman here

I won't I won't go into those I'll but I will set them aside here in fact we take this point to just draw your attention to a couple of books or to a certain kind of book you you may not know that such books exist they prove a very very helpful if you regularly get questions from people family members or work associates poking at a problem in the Bible that they've spotted or somebody mentioned on the radio these kinds of books can be helpful that they're not the kind of book you just sit on a

read through this is called when critics ask but my guys learn how a popular handbook of Bible difficulties so over a lifetime of trying to wrestle through difficulties in the Bible he's put answers in here then here's here's an older one this is 92 this is 82 there may be something more contemporary than these that I've missed but cyclopædia Bible difficulties by gleason archers so those kinds of books are out there for your help by the way another methodological comment here just to help you survive I am keenly aware that after five hours of talking

you will remember almost nothing of what I say and that's the case with almost all elaborate argumentation for a true point which means bottom line that your deep confidence in the Word of God cannot rest on your memory of historical argumentation because your memory won't work like that and in the moment of trial either somebody attacking you or cancer being announced by the doctor that memory will not work you can't reconstruct five hours of elaborate argumentation for your confidence in the Bible it won't work the mind won't do it so where do you rest that

I'm aware of that so by the time we're done Lord willing tomorrow I will have honored that reality in the way I answered the question of your confidence I just want you to know ahead of time I'm not expecting you if I lay these one off to the others say I can't remember that I can you understand that and you're losing your balance you say my faith is gonna be as fragile as all this information I can't remember I hope not so hold on and stay with me and I will try to show you how

I live in the real world as a believer in the Bible when in fact I can't even remember my own best arguments that's true I'm 62 I've worked on this a long time and I've forgotten most of what I've studied I have to refresh every time I teach this course and so what good is that you got refresh well that's just life you just got we got to figure that out because that's where almost every human being is and most of the people in the world who are being preached to right now don't even have

a great school education and we expect them to die for Jesus confident that the Bible is true we better have another way for them to have warranted faith than to be able to reproduce all this stuff okay I'm aware of that and just once you know I'm where you are number seven as to why we're doing this if it is true if the book is true begin at this point if it is true the message of the Bible is the only message of eternal life because it says it is if it's not true it may

not be but if it is true then it is for example Psalm 95 96 verse 5 for all the gods of the peoples are idols but the Lord made the heavens all of them are idols that's a sweeping statement John 14:6 I'm the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father but through me John 6 67 jesus said therefore to the twelve you do not want to go away also do you Simon Peter answered Lord to whom shall we go you have the words of eternal life acts 4:12 there is salvation

in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved John 8:42 jesus said to them if God were your father you would love me for our proceeded forth and have come from God if you don't love me you don't know God you don't love God whoever denies the son does not have the father whoever confesses the son has the father also first John 5:12 he who has the son has life he who does not have the Son of God does not have life this is

a this is a sweep rejection of all other religion this is an intolerable thing to say in public in Minneapolis they have really ugly names for people that believe this Luke 10 16 the one who hears you hears me the one who rejects you this is Jesus talking rejects me and the one who rejects me Jesus says rejects him who sent me if you reject Jesus for who he is can't create him in your own image you say oh I believe in Jesus as a teacher that's not what he means like accept me on your

terms No accept me for who I am then you accept the father you reject me for who I am you reject the father Jesus Christ is the litmus paper that you put in the chemical of every religion if when you put Jesus Christ in the chemical of that religion they say I don't believe they don't know God that's big that's really big and so we need to know am I gonna stick my reputation on this and be called an absolutely foul-mouthed fundamentalist obscurantist in tolerant obscene pastor those are all words that have been used of

me in the newspaper or in personal letters from those pastors in the city well you decide here's number 8 for why we are taking this up building our lives of sacrificial service on a mistake would be pitiable if we have hoped in Christ in this life only in other words if if the resurrection is a myth and a sham we are of all men most to be what fools we are but absolute fools we are to embrace this build our lives on it make sacrifices for it structure our whole existence around it what a foolish

thing unless it's true number nine the Bible makes claims to inspiration and authority and inerrancy we have to come to terms with those for example second timothy 3:15 from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training in righteousness so there's the claim all Scripture we'll talk about what is contained there all Scripture is inspired by God and therefore it's profitable one last reason for why we're

doing this yet the most devout believers meet scriptures that do not seem coherent with other parts or with our experience and here are just a few the problem of justification by faith in James and Paul you see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone James 2:24 Romans 2 3 28 we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law and you can imagine coming to the Bible and just being presented with those two statements saying this Bible is not coherent you have to recognize that I

mean there are numerous things like that in the Bible and the question is whether or not those words are used the same by James and the same by Paul in such a way that they are constructing two different views of reality or not it is possible to say very different things and not have a meaning behind them that is contradictory that possible or for Samuel 1511 the word of the Lord came to Samuel I repent that I have made Saul King for he has turned back from following me for Samuel 15 28 29 so you

have God repenting I repent and here this is what is this 17 verses later the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you and also the glory of Israel will not lie or repent for he's not a man that he should repent now that's a little more comforting because the verses are only 17 verses apart which means you have the same author saying in one verse God repented that he made Saul King and 17 verses later saying God never

repents so either he is really really quickly confused or he has meanings in mind here that are not contradictory and you have to figure out what's going on so that's a tenth reason for why we need to be confident in the word because you're gonna bump into these kinds of things in your daily devotions pretty regularly and the longer you live and walk with the Lord I believe the more confident you become and the more solutions you can find and sometimes you need to suspend judgment and say I don't have time to work on this

Lord like to have an answer for what this means and how it fits with that over there and then you put it on a shelf or keep a list and as God gives you occasion you you work but my guess is we will go to our grave with some of those on the list unresolved you love anybody that you can't understand like Noel Piper baffles me over and over again what makes you tick no well I can't figure you out I love you I'm going nowhere but with you perplexing as you are as a human

being if you can do it with a wife you can do it with the Bible Bibles got a lot more going for it than Noel does she wouldn't be offended by that statement that's why I like her so that's step one why are we doing this you