We officially started our NEW series this past Sunday "40 Days in the Word" with part 1" Is the Bible reliable and trustworthy? You can listen to the podcast at http://www.wyandottefamily.com/listen.html or you can download it from iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wyandotte-family-church/id478735158
If you have been a part of Wyandotte Family then you know how much we love God’s Word. Every Sunday morning we share God’s Word in creative and fun ways. We believe God’s Word is life-changing, trustworthy and complete truth. I pray that as you continue to follow along on this blog you will learn to build your life more and more on God’s Word.
Last Sunday we talked about the Bible being historically accurate. The past 3 blogs we talked about the Bible being scientifically accurate, prophetically, and thematically accurate. Today we are going to look at the 4th & 5th reason we can trust the Bible.
The fifth way I can
trust the Bible is because it’s confirmed by Jesus.
Jesus
trusted the Bible. You may have heard somebody say, you may have even thought, “I
trust what Jesus said, I’m just not so sure about those other guys.” Or “I’m
not sure about the entire Bible.” Here’s
the challenge to that: Jesus trusted the rest of the Bible. So if I trust Jesus then I have to trust the
rest of the Bible, because Jesus trusted the rest of the Bible. Jesus proclaimed the Bible as a unique book
above all others.
Matthew 5:18, Jesus said, “I’ll tell you the truth, until heaven and
earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will
disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished!”
Jesus looks at the Bible and says, it’s going to last until the end of time. It’s going to accomplish what God wants to accomplish in this world. It will stand the test of time.
Jesus looks at the Bible and says, it’s going to last until the end of time. It’s going to accomplish what God wants to accomplish in this world. It will stand the test of time.
In
John 10:35 Jesus said “Scripture is trustworthy & cannot be
altered.” Jesus proclaimed the truth
of the Bible. And when Jesus talks about
the truth of the Bible, I’ve got to listen to that in my own life. When Jesus says that every sentence and word
of the Bible is true, that’s why I believe that every sentence and word of the Bible
is true. When you read how Jesus talked
about the Bible with people, he would often base his argument about the truth
of the Bible on a single sentence or even a single word from the Bible. So he believed every single sentence, every
single word. So why wouldn’t I, because
I trust Jesus?
When
Jesus talks about the Bible, he doesn’t just talk about poetry and history. He talks about it as something that is life
changing. Luke 11:28 Jesus said: “Blessed
rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” Do it. Not
just read it like poetry. But obey it because
God wrote it to our lives.
Jesus,
as he talked about the Bible, he talked about it as a real book, talking about
real people, and real places by a real God who’s really at work in our lives.
Just
a real quick list of some of the people and places that the Bible talks about
as real and Jesus also confirmed as he taught that were real.
Here’s
the interesting thing, particularly of those last four – Noah, Adam and Eve,
Sodom and Gomorrah and Jonah. Those are
the most disputed stories in the Bible by people who say, “It’s just a bunch of
fables. They’re good stories, good moral
stories, but they didn’t really happen.”
Jesus believed they really happened. In fact he used some of these as illustrations
of what was going to happen in his resurrection. If Jesus really believed in Jonah, I believe
it happened. I don’t know how God created
a fish who could swallow a guy, but he did. I don't know why Adam & Eve chose to disobey God in the garden, but they did. I trust in it because Jesus trusted in it.
It
sort of makes me smile when two thousand or three or four thousand years later we
look back at the Bible and go, “I’m going to trust that part and I’m not going
to trust that part. Based on my
subjective or emotional feelings, I’m going to accept that part and I’m not going
to accept that part.” Jesus trusted it. Jesus trusted it, so I trust it.
Augustine said, If
you believe in the Bible what you like, and you don’t believe what you don’t
like, it’s not the Bible you trust, but yourself. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that
my emotions, my opinions are not always trustworthy. They have lied to me and let me down on numerous occasions. I trust Jesus. He trusted the Bible. That’s another main reasons why I trust the Bible.
The sixth reason
that you can trust the Bible…It has survived all attacks.
That
makes it an unusual book. The Bible is the most despised book, the most derided,
the most denied, the most disputed, the most dissected, the most debated, the
most outlawed, the most destroyed, the most banned book ever in history. Millions of people have died because they
refused to give up their Bible. People
were killed. It was illegal. It’s still illegal in some countries. Today if you take a Bible into North Korea you
can get killed for it. South Korea is a Bible
country. But North Korea, if you take a Bible
in you can get arrested and thrown in jail and you can be killed for it.
This
Bible has been under attack for century after century after century by
everything you can imagine. Yet it is
still the most read book in the world, the mot published book in the world, the
most translated book in the world, the bestselling book in the world and it is
still making a difference in people’s lives.
Jesus
said this in Mathew 24:35 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words
will never pass away.” The only
thing on this planet that’s going to last is the Word of God. It’s eternal. Everything else is going to
burn up, but the Word of God is eternal, because truth is lasting forever.
Voltaire, the famous French
philosopher, was a brilliant man, a flat-out brilliant man. He was an atheist but he was flat-out
brilliant. He wrote a number of tracts
deriding the Bible. Voltaire made a very
famous statement in which he said “One hundred years from today the Bible will
be a forgotten book.”
Everybody’s
forgotten that quote! After Voltaire died,
for nearly one hundred years, his homestead was used as the book depository for
the French Bible Society. They sold Bibles
out of his house. It’s now a museum. People have forgotten Voltaire. Nobody forgets the Bible. “Heaven
and earth will pass away; my word will never pass away.”
1 Peter 1:24-25 “The grass withers and the flowers fall, [in other words temporary stuff
just wilts. Today’s news is worthless
tomorrow. You don’t read last week’s
newspaper. It isn’t worth anything. The temporary stuff doesn’t last. The grass withers and the flowers fade…] but
the word of God stands forever.”
There is a bumper sticker that says, “God said it, I believe it, that settles
it.” That’s really a backwards way to
say it. Because really what we ought to
say is “God said it, that settles it, whether we believe it or not.” Because whether you or I believe it or not doesn’t
change it at all. The fact is there are
a lot of things that are true; I don’t want them to be true. So I can say, I don’t believe it, because I
don’t want it to be true. It doesn’t make it not true.
I don’t want
that to be called immoral. It doesn’t matter
whether I want it or not. What God says
is moral is moral and what God says is not moral is not moral. It’s not my choice. He’s God and we are not. The amazing reality
is that when we align ourselves with His Word and His truth, we discover and
experience the very things we long for (peace, strength, purpose, and life). We look for these things in so many other things hoping to find true life. Yet, God has shown us in the Bible how to have a close relationship wit Him and experience true life!!
So you and I
go up on the Empire State Building. I
say, I don’t believe the law of gravity applies to me because I don’t believe
in it. So I jump off the Empire State Building. As I’m floating down at a rather rapid speed,
about the hundredth floor down a guy looks out the window and says, “How’s it going,
Jeremy?” And I say, “So far, so good.”
And that’s
the way many people are living their lives. God gives you the freedom to totally thumb
your nose to him and rebel against him your entire life. But that’s not the end of the story. You can run from God the rest of your life,
but then you can’t run anymore. Sorry. You’re going to come face to face with God one
day whether you believe in him or not. And
all of the “I don’t believe in him!” isn’t going to stop that event from
happening.
As we read
the entire Bible from cover to cover we realize that God has our best interest in
mind. Everything He asks us to do and everything He asks us not to do is simply
because He loves us, wants us to walk closely in relationship with Him and with
others. When we trust His Word, we will be living life the way He intends it to
be. When we live life the way He intends it, we experience His life. Is it easy…NO!
Is it worth it…YES!!
Join us
Sunday at 10:30am as we continue “40 Day’s in the Word” with part 2 “The Bible
changes us.”
This Blog has been adapted from Rick
Warren and 40 Days in the Word Campaign
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