The Bible: Can I Trust It?
Fact #1:
The majority of Americans have formed their beliefs about God and the Bible based on opinions, not facts, which is tragic when one considers how much readily accessible, credible information is so easily available.
Fact #2:
Christians only accept one book as the God inspired writings concerning God and the Christian faith. Consequently, one of the first questions that must be asked is, Can I Trust the Holy Bible? I believe will be able to answer that satisfactorily in these few short pages in an easy to understand manner as well as giving you additional references in case you want more resources.
One of the things the Bible says about itself is found in Isaiah 40:8.
The grass withers and the flower fades but the Word of our God shall stand forever.
Introduction:
Over the years I have heard many questions raised with regard to the Bible. In every case it is obvious that those raising the question aren’t really serious. They are simply using out dated questions or statements as an excuse for not giving the Bible serious consideration. One of the ways I can tell is because it is obvious by the way they make their statements or ask their questions that they don’t really expect an answer nor do they want one.
The problem is, the most common objections are not true, nor are they well thought out.
- The Bible is not just a bunch of stories. Not at all. It is a historical document of events that really happened.
- The Bible is not written by men. Yes, God used men, but the Bible was written my God.
- If you have your own source of truth, look out. That’s a very, very bad plan.
- The Bible is too old to be revenant - it's not scientific. You about to have a great surprise. The Bible is more modern than tomorrow. How can a book that has prophecies that are still coming true be irrelevant.
- Lastly, what about the contradictions? I can tell you, absolutely, unequivocally, the Bible is not filled with contradictions.
Transition:
So, let look at three major types of evidence that, as Josh McDowell has titled one of his book: “Evidence that Demands a Verdict.”
There are three categories of evidence which we will consider :
1.External evidence; 2.Internal evidence: 3.Experiential evidence: 1. External Evidence: is evidence outside the Bible itself. It is evidence that has nothing to do with what's in the Bible, just general evidence for the authority of Scripture and the fact that it is a unique, supernatural book - the Book God wrote..
The Bible is pre-eminent among all literature in it's circulation.
It’s Circulation: It is read by more people in more languages than any other book in human history by far. Over 300 times, almost 350 times, the Bible has been translated completely into different languages. No other book comes close to that. Portions of the Bible have been translated into more than 2,000 different languages. In fact, people have gone out repeatedly to places where the language isn't even know, learn the language for the express purpose of translating the Bible into that language. And all we know about that people group we know because the Bible now exists in a portion or as a whole in their language. I mean, just the numbers of Bibles, it is pre-eminent in its circulation.
Even 30 years ago, the British and Foreign Bible Society, in order to meet it's demands, had to publish 32,876 every day. That’s 1,369 an hour, 22 a minute, 1 copy of the Bible every 3 seconds, and that was only a part of all the Bibles that were being printed.
In 1998, annually, the Gideons were placing and distributing more than 45 million Bibles. This averages 1 million copies every 8 days or 86 copies a minute.
Since 1815-1975, 2.5 BILLION Bibles have been printed and distrubuted.
There's not a book that comes close to that. So we see the Bible is pre-eminent in circulation.
It's influence. No other book comes close to influencing human history like the Bible. More books have been written about the Bible, more books quote the Bible. It has a greater effect on the development of human language. More books have been written to assist in the study of the Bible.
Bernard Rohm, the theologian says, "From the Apostolic Fathers dating 95 AD to modern times there is one great literary river streaming from the Bible." There are Bible dictionaries, Bible encyclopedias, Bible lexicons and atlases, geography's, just as a starter. Then at random we might take the vast bibliographies around theology, religious education, hymnology, missions, the Biblical languages, Biblical history, religious biographies, religious devotional works, commentaries, philosophy of religion, evidence, apologetics, and on and on. An endless stream of writing, all in response to people facing up to and dealing with the Book God wrote - the Bible.
You can’t get around it. The Bible is pre-eminent in it's influence. But you might say, "Now wait a minute. There are other books written about God. What about the other religious writings? What about all those Eastern books? What about the Koran?"
A man by the name of Monterrel Williams, not to be confused with Montel Williams, who spent 42 years studying Eastern books and comparing them with the Bible, wrote, "Pile them, if you will, on the left side of your study table, but place the Bible on the right side all by itself - all alone - with a wide gap between them, for there is a gulf between it and the so-called books of the East which severs the one from the others utterly, hopelessly and forever a veritable gulf which can not be bridged over by any science or religious thought."
Lots of people have written books about God, But God only wrote one book. It's The Bible.
The Bible is pre-eminent among all religious writings.
It's preservation against attack.
God has preserved the Bible from the attack of men.
It goes without saying that the Bible is ever and always under attack. There are many people, men and women who have given themselves through out human history who have tried to wipe God's Word from the face of the earth. Always, always, always failing. No book as been so burned and banned and outlawed as the Bible. The Bible could not still exist today were it not God's Book and had He not miraculously preserved it and kept it. For so many have spent themselves so inexhaustibly to try to erase it's influence in human history.
One example: The noted French infidel, Voltaire who gave his life in France for the eradication of all Christianity was quoted as saying (he died in 1778), "Within 100 years of my death, Christianity will be swept from existence and will have passed into history." But what happened? Voltaire has passed into history while the circulation of the Bible continues to increase, carrying blessing where ever it goes. Concerning the boast of Voltaire on the extinction of Christianity and God's Word, only 50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society purchased Voltaire's house in France, used his own printing press to produce stacks of Bibles. That is just an irony of human history. Please understand, the Bible has been preserved by Almighty God from the attack of man, and then consider this secondly,
God has preserved the Bible from the attack of time.
Now I need you to focus and think with me for a moment. I going to kind of wade out into something that may not be that familiar to some of you. We are going to talk about ancient literature. The Bible is not the only old book and many very wise men and women have given their life to the study of ancient literature. There are several subject matters that come up when you are trying to determine the reliability of a book. Now the question we all want answered this morning is this. We want to know when we pick up this book, is this book really an accurate representation of what was written as much as 1500 years ago? Do we still have that? There's three issues that come up as we try to discern if we still have a faithful representation of God's Word.
The first one is, the number of manuscripts. Manuscripts is the word that refers to hand written copies. We have only had the printing press for about 500 years. Before the printing press, God's Word was written by hand, and copied and copied and copied and copied by hand. All books were. And so it begs this question. "How many manuscripts do we really have?"
The second issue is this. Among the manuscripts we do have, do they agree? Because if one says in the book of Genesis this and another one says something else and they don't agree, they're all mixed up and confused, we would begin to wonder which one is really God's Word?
The third issue is, how much time is there between the original writing of the Bible, any individual book in the Bible. What is the gap between the original writing and what we have. Because if I were to tell you that the oldest manuscript we have of the Bible is from 1974, that would be a bit scary also. You would be thinking, "Quite a gap there. I wonder what happened there between what we have and what was originally written."
Now, let's go back and look at the evidence on those three things.
First of all, in regard to the number of manuscripts; today we have more than 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. In addition to that there are more than 10,000 very old Latin manuscripts of the Bible. In addition to that, more than 9,300 other early versions, listen. Today we have more than 24,000 manuscripts, copies or portions of the New Testament still in existence. That means the Bible is in first place by far. We have more manuscripts of the Bible than any piece of literature of antiquity. What is in second place? Second place goes to a book called Homer's Iliad. Homer's Iliad is a book of poetry by this guy that lived 500 B.C. and he wrote about the Trojan War. He wrote a bunch of poetry. Remember, we said that there are 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament or various portions of it. How many copies of Homer Iliad? 643. That is second place. Now if you were to drive down to the University of Chicago and show up there in the ancient literature department and say "I don't believe in the reality of the test of Homer's Iliad, there's not enough manuscripts," they would laugh you out of the building. 643 is a lot, but how can those same scholars turn around and criticize the text of God's Word when He has preserved 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament.
Let me tell you, we can have a lot of confidence when we hold this book in our hand. You might say, "What happens when they take it and compare it?" They put all these 24,000 manuscripts down on a table and they start to compare them to one another, do they really agree, or has there been a lot of deterioration, and, is it really the same?"
Sir Frederic Kenyon, one of the greatest authorities in the field of New Testament textual criticism said this. "There is no fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith that rests on a disputed reading. It can not be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. Especially is the case as with the New Testament. The number of manuscripts is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some form or another. This can be said of no other book in the world."
Compare it say to William Shakespeare. "In regard to the New Testament there are just a few, just a handful of passages where we wonder whether that was in the original. If you read through the Gospels you will find a little story about Jesus and His encounter with the women caught in adultery, where He writes in the sand. Some manuscripts don't have that story. That is the largest portion. There are some other very, very little things like word changes and word spelling that one could say, "which is right, which is not." Not one of those variant readings, (there are called), not one of them changes any principle doctrine of the Christian faith compared with say, Shakespeare. Did you know, there are whole large gaps, whole chapters and whole acts missing out of the works of Shakespeare. But no one ever tells you that. You go watch the play and they have filled in whole sections because the manuscript evidence for Shakespeare is so sparse that in many places we have no idea what he really wrote. And that's just a few hundred years ago. But you go back hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years before that and the evidence for the Bible is like the Sears Tower and the evidence for Shakespeare's work is like a three story walk-up. So hear me. You have absolutely no reason, none, to wander whether you hold in your hands a pure, preserved copy of God's Word.
But you say, "That's the New Testament. What about the Old Testament." Well, you know for years people use to question the Old Testament, like what's up with that, and how could that be true and how can I really count on that. One of the places they use to ridicule a lot was the book of Isaiah. They use to say, "All that stuff in Isaiah that talks about Jesus, that was really written after Jesus was born. Isaiah 53, all we like sheep have gone astray, He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our inequities, all those prophecies, somebody wrote those after Jesus was born and slipped it in."
For years the oldest copy of the Old Testament that we had was dated 900 A.D. and it was a concern.
Back in 1947 there was this little shepherd boy who threw a stone up into a cave and he heard this crash and he went up to check to see what it was. Then a whole bunch of people went up to see what it was. You know what they found? They found the Dead Sea Scrolls. 40,000 manuscripts, 1000 years older than they had ever seen before. Well the papers, even before they studied them, the newspapers in the late 40's were writing, "what are we going to find out about the Old Testament” and all the guys who for years had been criticizing the Old Testament saying that the text was greatly corrupted, and it isn't what it use to be and it was changed over time, they pulled out the book of Isaiah, that was one of the things they found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, an entire copy of the Book of Isaiah, a 1000 years older than any copy they ever had before, Let me just read to you what they wrote about what they found. "Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only 17 letters in question." That after a 1000 years of copying, and copying, and re-copying. 10 of these letters are simply a matter of spelling which does not effect the sense. 4 more letters are minor stylistic changes. The remaining 3 letters comprise only one word, the word "light" which is added in verse 11 which doesn't effect the meaning of the text. Thus in one chapter of 166 words there is only one word of 3 letters in question after 1000 years transmission and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage. God has preserved His Word. God Almighty wrote a Book. And as men were copying and re-copying, He was guiding their pens and making sure, like no other book in human history by far, that we could hold in our hands the uncorrupted, unadulterated, uncompromised Word of God.
Now let me add to that, this, proof from archeology.
Did you know that in the Old Testament there were a lot of things that for years college professors taught never happened; that never existed. What a joke. You don't believe that do you? Well, that was a big thing back in the late 1800's; “higher criticism) and everybody was attacking the Bible and running it down. "Moses never wrote that and this never happened." But then, a lot of people began digging over there. A lot of people were writing apology letters, well not really writing, if you know what I mean, they should have been. Let me just give you a couple of examples of this.
William Foxwell Albright, known for his reputation as one of the greatest archeologists of all times said this, "There can be no doubt that archeology has confirmed the substantial his-to-ric-i-ty of Old Testament tradition." Albright adds, "The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the 18th century, certain phrases which still appear periodically, has progressively been discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details and has brought increased recognition of the value of the Bible as a legitimate source of history."
Millar Burrows of Yale University says this, "On the whole, archeological work has undoubtedly strengthened the confidence in the reliability of the Scriptural record. More than one archeologist has found his respect for the Bible increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine. Such evidence as archeology has afforded thus far, especially by providing additional and older manuscripts of the books of the Bible. It strengthens our confidence in the accuracy with which the text has been translated through the centuries.
Let me just give you three examples of archeology. And honestly, if I could give you all the ones I have read this week we would be here all day. It has been a real encouragement even to my own faith. But here are 3 examples.
For years college professors ridiculed the Bible and have said that Moses did not write the Pentateuch. There are some specific reasons for that which I will not get into that this morning, of why they feel it necessary to prove that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch but suffice it to say that is a point of attack. Briefly, the reasons they give is, the say, "Hey, if Moses really lived in 1400 B.C. people didn't even write back then. People didn't even have a written language back then. How could Moses have written it. And beyond that there is no way that in 1400 B.C. they had such a complex system of government as is represented in the book of Deuteronomy. They didn't even have that so how could he have written about it. And little Christian kids sit in college classes and go, "I don't know." But then people start digging over there and these college professors start going "oops." For example, have you heard of the Ebla tablets. Digging in Northern Syria, since 1974 they have uncovered 17,000 ancient tablets at Ebla, proving beyond any doubt that was actually a written language in Moses' time and Moses' area over 1000 years earlier than they thought there was. In addition to that, in reading these tablets they find “the law code of Ebla have demonstrated elaborate judicial proceedings and case law. Many are very similar to the Deuteronomy law code.” In other words, the legal system as reflected in Deuteronomy, as complex as it was, was in use in all the region of Mesopotamia and the near east. So, all the sudden they have to go "oops," maybe Moses could have written it. Did write it.
Another thing they like to almost literally yell about all the time is the Hittites. Almost 50 times in the Old Testament it is says things about the Hittites. People would say, "What a joke, there weren't any Hittites. They have never found those people. You really take the Bible seriously? Well guess what they found? They found the Hittites. Over 1200 years of detailed history and culture of a people that multiple peoples call the Hittites. Oops. Well any way….
Then these people go into specific contexts in the Old Testament and they see things happening and they say, "That's ludicrous." Remember the story of Jacob who served his father-in-law, Laban for 14 years to get Leah and Rachel as his wives and then all the sudden Jacob pulls out. While Rachel is leaving she reaches back and steals her father’s idols. For a long time people have ridiculed that whole story and said, "That's ridiculous. Why would Laban even chase his daughters and son-in-law all over the country to try to get back some idols that he could buy at the corner store? That is ridiculous. That couldn't have even happened. Then all the sudden, let me read this to you, from Joseph P. Free, Archeology and the Bible, "Over 1000 clay tablets found in 1925 in the excavation of a Mesopotamian site, subsequent work brought forth 3000 tablets that revealed the ancient site as Nuzi. The tablets were written about 1500 B.C. They illuminate the background of many Biblical passages.. For instance this example: “When Jacob and Rachel left the home of Laban, Rachel stole Laban's family images, or ‘teraphim’. When Laban discovered the theft, he perused his daughter and son-in-law and after a long journey, overtook them. Critics have long wondered why he would go to such pains to recover images he could have replaced easily in the local shop. The tablets record one instance of a son-in-law who possessed the family images having the right to lay legal claim to his father-in-laws property." In other words, as long as son-in-law had the idols, he owned everything that was the dad's. No wonder he chased them.
Now, if time would allow, there are literally hundreds of things that archeology has uncovered that have caused people who were going, "That never happened, that can't be true," to have to back peddle, change the subject or say let's talk about something else.
Listen, don't let anybody back you down about God's Word. Don't let anybody tell you a bunch of stuff. Just say, "You know, I'm going to find that out and I'll get back to you.”
The truths of Christianity and the support for God's Word have satisfied the greatest minds of Christian history for 2000 years and the people of God need to stop backing up and stop wondering if they have a reliable document. Hear it from me. I spent nearly a month on just this subject of can I trust the Bible. I hope you brought yours with you this morning, because it needs to be taken very seriously.
Now let's talk about Internal Evidence.
II.Internal Evidence: evidence from within the Bible itself.
Internal Evidence: evidence from within the Bible itself.First is the amazing agreement we see in the Bible.
If I were to take all the people in this section, roughly, 40 people have you folks write about a subject very controversial, let’s say sports. What we want you to write about is what you believe is going to happen in the summer Olympics; how you believe it's going to happen, who the winners will be, which Judges get fired, oops. Now tell me. What do you think would be the possibilities of those 40 people agreeing in what they wrote. Everybody go like this. 0 That means "0" possibility. Now think for a moment of all that we have in this book. We have a book that was written over a period of 1500 years. It was written by 40 different people; not 40 people who went to the same church. 40 people from all different walks of life; poets, shepherds, Kings, preachers and they all write with amazing agreement. You know why? Because Almighty God had His hand on the pen and He guided them to write the words that were His words. This is a supernatural book. There is amazing agreement. But you say, "Hang on for a second. I was always told that the Bible is filled with contradictions. Not!!!" Hey, you know what? The next time somebody says to you the Bible is filled with contradictions, will you do this? Will you say to them, "Well, name one. And your first one is?" Now first of all, when you do that the vast majority of the people will go. I, I, I, I, don't know. If they come up with one, let me kind of tip you off to what kind of things people say are contradictions.
In doing so, let's talk about the total consistency of the Bible.
Second is the total consistency we see in the Bible.
There are five main categories of supposed contradictions. This is important subject. Let's be honest with each other. If the Bible contradicts itself, how many people will have a difficult time believing that God wrote it. I do. But it doesn't contradict itself.
.Message: People say, "have you ever read the Bible?" The message totally changes. In the Old Testament there is one message, but it totally changes in the New Testament. In the Old Testament it says "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but Jesus said something different. That's a contradiction?" No it isn't. Look at the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says straight up, "You have heard that it has been said, 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you, turn the other cheek, go the second mile.'" That's not a contradiction. That's the development of the message. The Old Testament was LAW. The New Testament is GRACE. There is no message contradiction. That's just said by people who don't have a clue about the Bible. They should read it!!! And study it!!!
Numbers: People get real technical with the Bible and say things like, "In Mark and Luke Jesus healed two blind men. In Matthew, it says that He healed one blind man at Jericho. Now which is it? Did He heal two or did He heal one." Now for a contradiction to be a contradiction there has to be two things that can not be true at the same time. I don't know who thinks these things up, but I didn't spend a lot of time on this one. Help me out. If two blind men were healed by Jesus at Jericho, is it not accurate to say that one blind man was healed by Jesus at Jericho. I totally know how one relates to two and I don't know why one writer of Scriptures wanted to key in on one man and the circumstances around it. Maybe there were several hours setting them apart. Maybe Jesus went to Jericho at two separate times. The Gospel of John tells us that the Bible could not begin to contain all that Jesus said and did. Maybe there are two totally separate days. All I know is that I sure don't want to lay awake all night on that one.
Additional: Here's one you will hear in college a lot. "Read the book of Genesis. In Genesis chapter one it says that God created man and woman together. In Genesis chapter two is says that He took woman from the man. Now, which is it? Both of those can't be true." Here's what's going on there. Genesis one is a "fly-by." It's 6 days of creation, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, each day what happens, seventh day God rested. It's the whole story. Then after the fly-by survey, they come back and they land on the focal point of God's creation, man and woman. “Now, let's go into a little bit more detail,” and so it does and tells is in more detail all the happened. (Also, the Bible continues to unfold information as it goes. Generally speaking, it is progressive in revelation and explanation.)
Here is one of the biggest ones they like to use. In Matthew 27 it says that Judas hung himself. In Acts 1 it says he fell head long and burst open. Those two things just can not be true. Agreed? Unless you have been to the valley of Hinnom where he did that it is a little difficult to appreciate the text. There are big trees that hang over the edge of the Valley of Hinnom. It is very easy to picture (not that you would want to) Judas going up there, trying to kill himself, hanging himself on the tree, after awhile, the branch breaks and he falls down to the bottom. Down at the bottom are these big tall jagged rocks between 20 and 30 feet high. In Acts, they are describing what it was like to discover the body of Judas; a pretty horrific scene there at the bottom. Both are true. One describes how they found him, the other describes what he did to take his life.
Now I'm giving you some of the best stuff, some of the biggest contradictions in the Bible.
Supposed historical contradictions.
- There is no such place as Jericho. But then they found it.
- There is no such king as David, but then they just found recently, in the last few years, some tablets that had the inscription on it, "The House of David." That phrase in used over 40 times in the Old Testament, and then "OOPS", I guess there was a house of David.
- No such thing as the Exodus, and now they have found caves and tablets that have pictures of women grabbing their babies and running in flight; paintings of this. And people are beginning to say, "This seems to picture a massive group of people fleeing the land of Egypt in an emergency situation.
It is amazing. Did you know that only 1 % of all archeological evidence has been uncovered, only 1% of the potential?
Now, if I were to stand here before you and say to you that I don't believe in Abraham Lincoln, I don't believe he ever existed, but I have only looked at 1% of the information, you would say, "Get serious. Look at some more." So why do we let people stand up in front of us and say "there was no this, there was no that," when they have only looked at 1 % of the evidence, even if they are very sharp, and most of them haven't even looked at that much. Let me tell you. This is what Romans 1:8 calls "suppressing the truth in unrighteousness." (NKJV) People want the Bible not to be God's Word, not because of the evidence for or against but because if God wrote a book then I better read it and do what it says: No more excuses. But I don’t want to do what it says, and so people do as the people in Romans 1:18 did and they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
And then, of course, there is the supposed scientific contradictions. People say the Bible is not scientific. When you respond by asking what they mean, or to give an example they say, "Well, take for example the book of Joshua. In the book of Joshua, God made the sun stand still for a whole day. Now, any scientist knows that if the sun stood still for a whole day, the earth would explode." Yeah, like if God could make the sun stand still but He couldn't hold the earth together. If God has one hand on the sun holding it still, He can't put His other hand on the earth and hold it together?
All of this is rooted in is a hyper-scientific, anti-supernatural effort. If it can't be explained on paper, it didn't happen. Now, I believe in a God who spoke the world into existence, do you? The greatest miracles in the Bible are in Genesis chapter 1 and after that it gets real easy. So all you have to decide is this, "Do you believe that the world was designed by a designer, or do you believe that it came from an explosion in space. For me, opinion 2 requires a lot more faith. To me, I don't see how you could throw a stick of dynamite into a printing factory and produce the Declaration of Independence. You might say, "Well, I have a lot of dynamite." I don't care how much dynamite you have. Order doesn't come from an ciaos; an exposition. Design doesn't come from an exposition, it comes from a creator. And that is what I believe. If there is a Creator, then I don't have a hard time believing the miracles in the Bible and I am thrilled to know that the Creator loves us enough to have written a Book
Let's talk just a moment about fulfilled prophecy. All through the Old Testament are prophecies, things that were written before they happened whether it be moments, days, years or even centuries. All through the Bible. No other book has that. Consider with me for just a moment just the prophecies concerning Jesus Christ. Do you realize, for example, that Isaiah 9 tells us that the promised child would establish an eternal kingdom. Isaiah 7 says that He would be born of a virgin. Ps. 72 says that the promised one would be worshipped by shepherds and kings. Micah 5 says that the promised one would be born in Bethlehem. Some might say, that is just luck, lucky guesses. Well, hang on for a second. There are over 61 major prophecies concerning the life of Jesus Christ that were written from 500 - 4000 years before He was born. Now, just take 7 or 8 of those. Scientists, unbelieving scientists tell us that that statistical probability of just 7 or 8 of those prophecies coming true in one person is 1 in 10 to the power of 17, or 1 in 100,000 trillion. That is a big number. Can you boil that down for me? Well, Josh McDowell describes it this way. "Take the state of Texas, cover it in silver dollars 2 feet deep, put a blindfold on a person, put a red dot on one of the silver dollars and ask him to wade out into the state of Texas and lay his hand out on the right silver dollar." You say, "How much time do I get?" Hey, there is absolutely no possibility that all of the prophecies in regard to the Christ Child could have come true to the letter as they did apart from the truth that I bring you this morning.
God wrote a book. There is external evidence for it. There's internal evidence for it. Now, let's talk about experiential evidence as we close
III. Experiential Evidence: How the Bible that impacts us, and the proof that this is not just another book.
Think about your own life. Some people wouldn't understand this, but you guys are going to understand this. You have seen this to be true. If this is God's book, then this book is going to impact me and influence me in a way that is different than any other book. True or false? This isn't going to be like reading Reader's Digest. This book is going to make an impact if this book was written by Almighty God. Now notice this, first of all and don't you agree?
The Word of God is gripping. There is something about the Scriptures that when you read it, it gets down into your heart, it just penetrates you. Hebrew 4:15 "The Word of God is living and powerful. It is sharper than any two edged sword. It's able to pierce to the dividing asunder soul and spirit. It's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Do you know what that means? It means that when I pick up this book and read it, it knows what I am thinking and it's going after me about stuff that I need to be gone after about. If I'm not telling the truth, the Bible grips me about it. If I am not loving my spouse the way that I should, the Bible grips me about it. If I'm not living in dependence of God, the Bible grips me about it. If I have a secret sin, I don't want to read the Bible, because when I do, it grips me. True or false? That's because it is God's Book. The Bible is gripping. But notice this also.
The Bible is comforting. A totally different subject. The Bible is comforting, isn't it? You would have to agree.
Now, how would you like to write a book like that? Could you write a book that would touch every person that opens it with an open heart. Could you write a book that would lift the burdens of every sincere person who opened its pages? Could you do that? No! And no man has ever lived that could do that. It's God's Book. It is comforting. But also notice this.
The Bible is convicting. Isn't it? The Bible is so convicting. I know that because I get shaken by it before you guys do. I study all week and I'm in my office and often it just convicts me. And then I stand up here on Sunday morning with my knees trembling, can't believe that I have to say this stuff to people, but wanting to be truthful to God's Word. And I stand up here, and I open up this book and begin to preach and to proclaim the things that are in this Book and I watch your faces and I see the spirit of God begin to use the Word of God to convict you. I see people hang their heads down and I see tears running down people's cheeks, and I see this Book that God wrote lay hold of people's hearts and it just reminds me again and again that God wrote a Book. And it's amazing. You never get over its impact.
I thought you would get a kick out of this. This is a lady who listens to Christian radio wrote to the host of one of the programs she listens to. This is a portion of that letter.
"Dear Sir,
Enclosed is a money order for $25. Please send the series, "Romantic Love." She then says some personal things, then continues with, "My husband is 92 and I am 76. And we are so grateful to God that He gave us to each other. We have had 53 years of romantic love. Yours truly, and then signs her name.
How can you explain a women that has been in love for 53 years and she hears the Word of God opened - she heard a series on Song of Solomon, and in a fresh new way, it impacts her heart so much that she's saying, "I've got to hear that again. And she takes up a pen…listen, that's God's Word. And nothing, nothing, nothing, could accomplish that. If this were a book written by a man we wouldn't have these stories to tell.
The story is told by John McArthur about a man that came into his church so weighted down with guilt and so burdened and he said, "I need your help. I've got this heavy cloud over my life. I'm an abortionist. I kill babies for a living and I can't shake the weight that I am bearing." And John said, "Here read the Gospel of John." People say don't that it will confuse him. So he picked it up, read it for a whole week. John said, "And figure out who Jesus is."
He comes back into the office a week later, sits down in front of John with a big smile on his face and says, "I know who He is. He is God's Son. And he begins to parrot back to John the thesis of the Gospel of John. He's God's Son and He came into this world and died for our sins and he rose again and if we place our faith in Him, and trust in Him we can have our sins forgiven."
John said, "That's not in the Gospel of John." He said, "No, I got so excited I read the book of Romans too.
Isn't that great. Listen, that's God's Word. Now I want to tell you something this morning. God wrote a book and it is griping, it is comforting, and it's convicting and lastly, it’s freeing. How many people here have been set free by the truth in God's Word. We believe in this book.
