It is Sunday night about 8 pm on October 30, 1938. Families all over America are sitting down in their living rooms to gather around the family radio for their evening entertainment. Some may have hoped to hear some big band music or maybe the Andrews Sisters or Bob Hope. Some wanted to hear a funny story by Jack Benny or hear another episode of “The Shadow.”
But as the music played on CBS that night, a reporter broke in to announce that an explosion on Mars had been detected. More details to follow. Then the music started again but not for long as the reporter then announced that a UFO had landed in a farmer’s field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. He described the UFO as a large metallic cylinder and then, to his horror, described an alien life form coming out of the UFO.
“Good heavens,” he declared, “something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. I can see the thing’s body now. It’s large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… it … ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”
The “reporter” goes on to describe mass horror and devastation with other “reporters” from all over the world reporting similar catastrophes. Some of you may recognize this as a radio dramatization by Orson Welles called “The War of the Worlds.” It was meant to just entertain but actually created a nationwide panic as people all over thought their world was being attacked by aliens from outer space.
We laugh at the ridiculousness of this now but the people that heard it were convinced. Their lives were shaken by it and I’m sure some of them had a hard time believing anything they ever heard again. It was so well done and well-acted and thought-out that a lot of people were completely fooled. Do you think anything like that could ever happen again? It happened once. What is to keep it from happening again?
Every Sunday morning we gather together in person or by video and we talk about, sing about, pray about things we have read in the Bible. Our lives have been changed by it. Our futures are guaranteed by it. We claim it as our rock and our light and the answer to all our problems and we justify everything we do, say and think by what it says. It’s kind of a big deal for us around here, right?
What if it’s a scam? What if it’s an elaborate hoax? What if it is not really true and it’s all made up and God is not real, Jesus never died for us, He never rose again and everything we count on was made up by some guy a thousand years ago as a joke? That would change everything, wouldn’t it? If that is true and God never gave us His Word then think of how many things would change.
We get our laws, our morality, our history and our peace from scripture. How we act and how we think of others is all dependent on what the Bible says and if we ever found out it wasn’t true, I don’t think it is an over-statement to say that our society would collapse. If scripture is not true, then there is no God and there are no morals and there is no reason to live or allow others to live except for the most basic of instincts and desires.
So, how do we know? How do we know that what we read in this book is God’s Word? How do we know that all 66 books are what He wants us to know? How do we know that every different author of these books was inspired by God and not just having a dream or ate some bad pizza the night before? Those are big questions that need to be asked if we are going to point to scripture and tell people it is truth as we witness to them.
We are continuing our sermon series on apologetics this week and if you will turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3, we will see what scripture has to say about scripture and then we will decide if we can believe it or not. Apologetics is just knowing what you believe and why you believe it and everything we believe as Christians is based on what the Bible says. So, it is vital that we are able to answer the questions that come up about the validity of our source of knowledge. You can expect people to question the Bible. They should. There are not a whole lot of trustworthy sources of truth in this world so let’s talk about how we know scripture is truth.
In 2 Timothy, Paul is writing to his young preacher boy, Timothy, to encourage Timothy with literally Paul’s last words. This is Paul’s last letter to write and so you can imagine it includes what Paul thinks is most important. The whole book is so relevant to us today but especially the third chapter. He starts the third chapter by telling Timothy there will be terrible things happen in the last days. They will be perilous, treacherous, dangerous times and people will be so ungodly. Does that sound like truth so far? Let’s read 2 Timothy 3:16 to get some more relevant truth for our study today.
Paul says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
All scripture is God-breathed. Some versions say, “given by the inspiration of God” but the NIV translates it best here when it says it is “God-breathed.” Ok, I’m gonna teach you some Greek this morning. It is, in fact, all the Greek I know and I only know it because I looked it up this week. That word translated “God-breathed” is “theopneustos.” Say it with me. Theo, which means God and pneustos which means air, wind or breath. We get the word “pneumatic” from pneustos. Theopneustos. It is only used here in the Bible but there is another time when scripture refers to God breathing and it is found all the way at the other side of the Bible in Genesis chapter two where God breathes into the nostrils of Adam and it says, “the man became a living being.”
Now, obviously this was before the six-foot rule came into effect with the Coronavirus but God breathed life into Adam and He did the same thing with this book. He breathed life into it by inspiring some forty different authors over the course of 1500 years, give or take a few, to say what he wanted said to all of mankind.
But can you believe that? Can you believe what the Bible says about the Bible? Well, the Bible actually encourages you not to take my word for it. You should see for yourself. In 1 John 4:1 it says, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” And in Acts 17, scripture applauds the Bereans for checking things out for themselves. It says, “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”
So, who should you believe? How about Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States? He said, “Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties. Write its precepts in your hearts and practice them in your lives.” How about good old Ronald Reagan? He said, “Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.” Charles Spurgeon said, “A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.” And Abraham Lincoln said of the Bible, “Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man.”
Let me read one more. The great scientist, Isaac Asimov said, “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” Okay, you can’t win ‘em all and you can’t believe ‘em all either. So, how else can the Bible be proved? Well, the Bible makes claims on the basis of history and eyewitnesses.
The Gospel writer, Luke, starts off his book by saying, “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” In other words, Luke saw what he saw and wanted to write about it as an eyewitness.
Another eyewitness, Peter, said in 2 Peter 1:16, “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our LORD Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” We can prove these men lived and worked and how they died so the words of eyewitnesses are powerful.
But I hear ya. Some people say they don’t believe the Bible that we have is the same as the Bible that was originally written. That would be a good point if it were true because maybe the Bible started out true but has been corrupted after all these years and translated into all different languages and just in English we have a hundred different versions of it. We don’t even have original manuscripts so how do we know?
Well, let me give you some details. If you want this to show your unbelieving friend, you can go to our church website tomorrow or the next day and I will post this whole sermon on there if you want to plagiarize me and that’s okay because I’m plagiarizing somebody else much smarter than me. But for the Old Testament, we have three main Old Testament manuscripts: the Masoretic text (a Hebrew text dating from about AD 1000), the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew dated 3rd century BC), and lastly the Dead Sea Scrolls (408-318 BC). All these are in significant agreement, although there are some minor differences. (And by minor differences, I mean, like, how Nebuchadnezzar is spelled and stuff like that.) Therefore, we can be sure that the Old Testament we have today is the same as the one Jesus used (which Jesus freely quoted from) and is the same as Jews were using 400 years before Jesus came!
The New Testament situation is slightly more complex. There are thousands of Greek manuscripts (the language the New Testament was originally written in). And while none of them are complete, there is a ton of overlap and what is written in one is the same as what is written in another to the point that New Testament scholars estimate that we can be 99% certain that the text we have today is completely original! (https://www.biblword.net/is-the-bible-true/)
By comparison, Homer’s Iliad has only 643 manuscripts and nobody questions its validity. But there is something about the Bible that makes people want to question it and need to question it because to claim the Bible isn’t true is way easier than trying to live by it. And if you believe it’s true then that is just what you have to do.
Look, where we can check biblical claims against verifiable truth, the Bible proves itself accurate. History, archaeology, science, and philosophy have shown Scripture to be factual and consistent. (https://www.gotquestions.org/is-the-Bible-true.html) There are the Old Testament prophecies that came true in the New Testament. We have talked about this lately so I won’t go into it again but those are easily verified and prove the validity of scripture.
Part of how we know scripture is true is just its endurance. Ever since its beginning, people have tried to do away with it. It has been banned and burned and taken away and yet, as Isaiah 40:8 reads, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.” Even today, it is forbidden in places not far from here. According to a December 2001 decision by a Saskatchewan court of appeals, the Bible is now considered hate literature in Canada if it is quoted verbatim and in context, specifically if it’s used to condemn homosexuality. But there is a double standard for the Koran as it’s not been labeled as having hate speech, even though it contains verses that demand the death of all who reject Allah. (https://faithinthenews.com/)
So, I’ll tell you one of the ways I know that scripture is true is that all the people that want it banned and say it’s not true and get so upset about it or the Ten Commandments or any part of scripture being read – all those people live in such a way that they look and act and sound miserable. If you have no peace and no joy in your life and you hate the Bible, that tells me a lot about the Bible. Do you know what I mean?
It’s sort of like, as a Christian conservative, I know that if Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and the whole Democrat party are against something, it must be something to support. That’s not the only litmus test to use but it definitely helps me. If I know that Cher or Madonna say I should do something, I know I should do just the opposite, right? That’s the way it is with the Bible. When the world wants it banned but don’t have a problem with any other religion, we must be on to something.
So, if you want or need to prove the Bible is real and true and God-breathed then those are some of the ways that you might go about it. You can tell what other respected people think about it. You can show how it lines up with history and how the authors were often eyewitnesses to what they wrote. You can prove it is consistent by comparing all the old manuscripts or even comparing it to respected archaeology, science, and philosophy…and that will be fine if you want to do that. Boring but fine.
Admit it. You won’t hurt my feelings. Hearing about how many manuscripts there are for the Old Testament and the New Testament is not exactly fascinating, is it? It’s boring. I’ve struggled with that all week long preparing for this message. I have struggled because if somebody doesn’t want to believe the Bible, no amount of proof will change their mind. If somebody is dead-set against God and His Word, then you can talk and argue and debate until you are blue in the face and they will not allow themselves to be convinced.
They don’t want to be convinced because, like I said earlier, if you truly believe the Bible, then you have to live it out. You have to do what it says. It WILL change your life. If you realize that the Creator of the universe has written you a letter telling you the best way to live, you should read it and believe it. He sent you this letter because He loves you so much that He would even send His only Son to die for you and He wants to spend eternity with you. And if you can read about Jesus being crucified and dying for your sin and NOT be changed by it then no amount of pie charts, graphs, letters, notes, manuscripts or any other kind of proof is going to change your mind.
I’ve told you before that going to the jail is one of the highlights of my ministry. It is so much fun to talk with those guys, many of whom have never set foot in a church building but got their hands on a copy of the Bible, read it and had their lives changed completely. I see it all the time. We have men in our church that were in that exact situation. They had no hope, no peace or joy and they got a jailhouse copy of the Bible and now they are different men than when they went in and have been for years. That’s just fun to watch and that is how I know the Bible is true.
I ran across a blog awhile back written by a woman who is just an average, ordinary (maybe even boring) old mom but her words were powerful and obviously given by God. Forgive me for reading but she is a better writer than I am a speaker so listen to this.
Reading the Bible all the way through changed my life forever. Before then, my understanding of Scripture was like a collage of little pictures glued together on a poster board. I knew bits and pieces of the Bible and a lot of Bible stories, but I didn’t understand how everything fit together. I didn’t have context for the things I knew, and I kind of thought the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were at odds with each other.
That January with my discipleship group’s encouragement and accountability, I opened my Bible to the book of Genesis and began to work my way through its pages. Averaging three chapters a day, I walked with Abraham in the deserts of ancient Mesopotamia and wrestled along with Sarah as she waited for her promised son. I observed the brutality of mankind and how it infuriated God. The stories of God’s wrath actually began making sense to me. Who would want a God who didn’t get angry at oppression and injustice and rape and infanticide and the idolatry which led to it all?
Page after page, I saw the suffering sin always brings and God’s continual, tender call to His people, “Come to me. Make me your refuge. Give your hearts to me and no other. Turn from your sin and suffering and come to me.” The Bible wasn’t a rule book; it was a love story.
Even now, the very same God who called Abraham is calling us to Himself through the Scriptures. His love for us pulses through every point of time and pursues us right now—even through the modern-day technology of this blog! Every time you open your Bible and read its words, you are close enough to God to feel His very breath.
Isn’t that good? When I grow up, I want to write like her. See, the Bible is God-breathed. Every word is what God wants us to know so that it changes our life for our good and His glory. When you read and believe and live out the Bible, that is the proof that others really need to see and it’s not boring. It’s not a book of rules. It is a love letter from all-mighty, all-loving, all-powerful God who wants you to live a full and abundant life here on earth (John 10:10) and to have eternal life in Heaven with Him when this life is blessedly over.
There is a lot of bad news in this world nowadays. But we are not the first generation to go through difficult times. Through the Bible we can learn how to act and what to expect and how to get through these difficult times through the stories and lives of people all the way from Genesis with Adam and Eve to the lives of Paul who wrote our text for today to John who wrote what God told him to write in Revelation.
Their lives were changed. How about you? Do you have a relationship with the Author of this best-selling book? You can. You can be forgiven of your sin. You can have a new start. You can have peace and joy in this world and the assurance of life in Heaven when you die. It’s a pretty sweet deal because all you have to is believe and allow God to come into your life and start to change your life.
Do that right now in prayer as the music plays.
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