The Truthfulness of Scripture

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This last week. I believe it was this last week. I don't know if a lot of you guys keep up with this sort of thing, but there was a presidential debate. Raise your hand if you watched that. That's actually a shocking amount. I don't know if this is true, but subjectively, it seems like there are more people y'all's age that are even thinking about politics at all. I don't know if anybody really did when I was your age, and that wasn't that long ago. I was in youth group, like ten years ago. I guess that is maybe a long time, but it's not that long in the grand scheme of things. That was just a couple presidents ago. But, yeah, I just think that's, that's interesting. But I guess a lot of you guys did see it. Now, what's so interesting? Whenever a politician speaks, not even naming any particular politician, because this could be spread out to any besides just the two presidential candidates. But we know one thing, and it's kind of a joke sometimes, but it's more serious than that. It's that they don't tell the truth. So often they don't tell the truth. Sometimes they're lying. Sometimes they're just mistaken. Maybe, you know, maybe they just don't really know and they're trying to act confidently. Sometimes they avoid talking about the truth. So there's different forms of not telling the truth. Some are worse than others, in my opinion, but we know that happens. And if you watched it, you probably noticed that there was some untruthful things said by both of the candidates. And this is not abnormal anymore. It's not abnormal at all. We kind of expect it, but at the same time, we're frustrated by that. I'm frustrated by that. If you watch it with your parents, they probably were frustrated by that, at least with one of the candidates saying, you know, why is that so and so not lying there? Why are they not telling the truth? But it's because the reason we, well, the reason we react that way is because we do care about what is true. And that just makes sense. Can anybody tell me or maybe a few answers, why do we care about truth? Why do we care about truthfulness so much? Levi? Yeah. You would feel comfortable feeling like you know the truth, but if you, everyone's lying. That's a pretty anxious position. It's a good answer. Mm hmm. [00:02:55] Speaker B: Because you don't want to believe false things. [00:02:58] Speaker A: Yeah, we don't want to believe false things. Why don't we want to believe false things? [00:03:01] Speaker B: And then we'll get led to the wrong truth. [00:03:04] Speaker A: Yeah, led in the wrong direction seems like an obvious answer, but that's completely true. Yeah. Caleb? Yeah. Yeah. Similar to what Levi said. It's like the boy who cried wolf where it's like. It's like those reality elimination games, like Survivor. Katie loves survivor. It's like her favorite show. And that's okay. I'm sure maybe some of you guys. Anyone like survivor? Yeah, we got some survivor fans. See you guys talk to Katie about it. She loves it. I don't like them as much because all of the deception, I just don't like how it feels. But, you know, maybe I'm just a wimp, but anyway, I just care about truth. It's all a game. It doesn't matter. So anyway, those are great answers and it's true. Want to know the truth? And it's kind of just obvious. You don't even have to really think about it to know. Okay. It's good to know what is true and what is not true. Well, today we're talking about the truthfulness of scripture, which, of course, because truthfulness is important. It's important to know if what we're calling the word of God is actually completely true. The main idea, I'll just start there. Which. There's some blanks on your handouts. Does everybody have one? Yeah. Is that truthfulness? That's the first blank. Truthfulness is an attribute of scripture. Truthfulness is an attribute of scripture by which whatever it confirms corresponds to reality. So what is real? Anything in the Bible is not from some fictional land. It is corresponding to what is real to reality. And it never affirms anything contrary to facts. So anything that is just not factual doesn't affirm. This also means that scripture never contradicts itself. That's the third blank. Scripture never contradicts itself. That's the main idea we're going to think about today. Let's start by just reading a verse from proverbs 30. So if you want to look at proverbs 30, it's the verse written at the top right corner of the board. I think it's on your. Yeah, it's on your handouts. Proverbs 35 says this. Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. And even if you read on to the next verse, do not add to his words lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. God's word proves true. What he says, if we know he has said it, we know it will always be true. And that's the direction we want to come from. We want to know that we see God's own word is telling us what I say proves true. So we want to go through these four points and examine the truthfulness of scripture. But as we get into it, before we begin, I just want to note that truthfulness is a word that we all know, but a word that you might commonly hear, I might reference it a couple of times, but you might commonly hear is inerrancy. So it's I n e r r a n c y. Inerrancy. That is without error. It has no error. So it means the same thing. So I use the word truthfulness now to understand this doctrine, which christians have always believed, the truthfulness of scripture. The first point we're going to look at is the view of Jesus when we read from the gospels, the accounts of Jesus and the things he taught. What did he think about scripture? We touched on this a little bit last week, but we're kind of going from a different angle. We're going to look at whether it is true. Last week we were talking about, is it inspired by God? But now we want to know, is it true? Is it all true? Now, there are some parts of the Bible that skeptics, whether it be atheists or liberal christians or, you know, just different worldviews, there are parts of the Bible that are more attacked, people dispute all the time. Do you guys know any of those? I want to hear some examples. What's a part of the Bible that people often say, oh, that can't be true or that's wrong? Yeah. You said resurrection. Yeah. That is attacked all the time. Yeah. Creation. Creation. Yeah. Especially creation in six days. But yeah. Even more to. Is there a creation at all? Jonah. Yeah. So people might have moral or ethical disputes to things the Bible seems to condone. Yeah. Like slavery. Uh huh. Yeah. I'm sorry. [00:08:24] Speaker C: Miracles. [00:08:25] Speaker A: Miracles. Yeah. Yeah. That's a huge one, too. Those are all great answers. There's more. We're going to look at a few of those, and we mentioned at least one of the ones I want to look at. Let's first go to Matthew. Matthew 19. So we're going to be in the gospels for the next few passages. We're going to start in Matthew 19. Can I get someone to read verses three through six of Matthew 19? I see Caleb's hand. Yeah, read it loud and proud. Matthew 19. Three, six. [00:09:12] Speaker B: He answered. Have you not read that he who created their clothing name, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother. Whole fast. [00:09:32] Speaker A: Yeah. So here, the first part we see this is addressing Adam and Eve. So if you look at those sub points, we have Adam and Eve. If you want, you can take notes or write in the passage that we're referencing next to it. So this passage, he's addressing Adam and Eve. And the way he's addressing it is that one he's quoting from the account in Genesis. And also that he is assuming it to be real. He's not saying this is an allegory. He's using it and a logical argument against his intellectual opponents, the Pharisees. So based on this passage, what does Jesus think about Adam and Eve? That they were real. There you go. Very good. He believed they were real. And this goes to the creation account. He is saying the creation account, the first two people even, and how they were created and joined together by God, is a true account. Another issue that is often attacked that we didn't mention is the flood, the universal flood of Noah. And this is addressed in Matthew 24. So just flip over a couple of pages to Matthew 24. Would somebody else read verses 36 through 39? 36 to 39. Violet, did you want to read them? Okay, cool. It's okay if you need a minute. [00:11:34] Speaker B: But concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the son, but the father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be becoming of the son of man. For as in those days before the blood, they were eating and drinking, marrying, and until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came in and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the son of man. [00:11:58] Speaker A: Very good. Thank you for reading. So, according to this, what does Jesus think about the flood? It happened. It's pretty simple, straightforward. It happened. He sees it to be true, and he uses it again as a point in teaching. So the flood also happened. So that's another one. Another that is, we didn't mention, but it's another one that you'll hear probably more as you get older, especially if you go to college. I experienced this. The author of the first five books of the Bible, Genesis through deuteronomy, is Moses. But whether or not he actually wrote that, or whether or not he had a lot of help later on, is what is questioned. But Jesus talks about this as well in John. So now we got to flip a couple books over to the gospel of John, chapter five. John five. Can somebody read 45 through 47? Okay. [00:13:12] Speaker C: Do not think that I will accuse you to the father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believe Moses, you will believe me, for he wrote me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? [00:13:31] Speaker A: Exactly. So what is he saying about Moses writings? That he wrote them. Yeah. And anything else he's saying there. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. He wrote about him. Yeah, that's true, too. I'd also add that they're true. He's saying, if you believed Moses, knowing that they would have believed Moses, for he wrote the scriptures which jesus affirms in Matthew as well as we learned last week. He says, you would believe me. So he's equating. Jesus is equating his own words with the words of Moses. And so that is even more than just saying, yes, Moses wrote it. He's saying, what he wrote is true, and it is my word. Now, the final example from Jesus, which there are more, and some of the other ones we brought up addresses as well. But the final one we're going to deal with is Jonah. Jonah. Was Jonah real? Was he actually swallowed by a big fish and spit out? Well, if we go back to Matthew, chapter twelve, we see Jesus does address the story of Jonah. And I'll read this one. Matthew 1240, Jesus says, for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So why does it matter that Jesus refers to Jonah here in this context? What is he telling us in that he will die and he will come again. Yeah. So do you think this tells us that Jonah was three days, three nights in the belly of the fish? Seems to be that he is assuming it to be true. And even using it as an example that God had planned in advance to show what he would then do for sins. So it's actually a really significant event to question the truthfulness of that event, questions why Jesus thinks it to be real in the first place. So I think those are four ways we can see what Jesus thought of the scripture, but there are other ways that we can learn even more about this doctrine. And we can go to our second point for that, which is the view of the church. So the view of the church, this is also the view of church history and tradition, because when we read the Bible, sometimes people disagree about things, they argue about them, they figure out an answer and we move on. That is church history. And that's how it helps us to understand these doctrines, because they argued about it hundreds and hundreds of years ago so that we now have a better idea of what the Bible says. So the first aspect of the view of the church is truthfulness. So I know that's the title, but it's truthfulness. So these are. We're going to go through four different attributes of scripture here related to the truthfulness. But the first one just is truthfulness. This is basically just saying that the Bible corresponds to reality, which is what we have in our main idea. Now, can I get. I need three people to volunteer to read something. One to Talia. Yeah. Three. Okay, can you do second? Samuel 728. Did I point at you, Caleb? Okay, can you do psalm 100 1960? And then, Thalia, can you go back to proverbs 35? Because I want us to kind of hear these all together. I mean, if you're someone else, you can flip to one of them if I. You'd like. Anya, are you ready? Yeah. Two. Samuel 728. [00:18:14] Speaker B: O sovereign lord, you are God. Your words are trustworthy. [00:18:21] Speaker A: Your words are trustworthy. Okay, now, Caleb, can you read psalm 100 1960? Okay. We want to keep his commandments. And then proverbs 35, every word of God proves true. [00:18:39] Speaker B: He is a shield to those who take reference to him. [00:18:42] Speaker A: Great. So every word of God proves true. We read that at the beginning. And if we add in John 1717, Jesus praying to the father says, sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth. So these are just a few verses from all over the Bible telling us about the truthfulness of the word. Let me ask this question. What if the Bible is not true? What would that mean for us? Yeah. This is all a big mistake, what we're doing. It's true. Yeah. Uh huh. Wasting our time. Yeah. [00:19:45] Speaker C: It still means I live or I live a good life. [00:19:50] Speaker A: Can you explain that a little bit? If it's not true, it doesn't mean anything to you or to whom. [00:19:59] Speaker C: It's just I feel like even if it's not true, it still means that I lived a good life. Meaning I tried my hardest to be good. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So I guess someone might be trying to find something positive and say, well, at least I lived a moral life. But who's to say if this is true, that you did live a moral life? You lived a moral life according to a false book. So, yeah, some things are good, but there are people around us that say some of the things this book teaches are bad and some of the things that we are teaching are bad if this is not true. So I understand that and I totally believe that a ton of people think that, but even that is still a grim picture, you know, it's not encouraging. Now, what if only some of the Bible is not true? What if, like, important parts are true, but not the rest? Yeah, yeah, well. But the important parts are true. [00:21:02] Speaker C: Well, how do you find the important part is the resurrection? [00:21:05] Speaker A: Good question. Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. I think that's the, you know, the cycle you get stuck in what's true, and it boils down to you have no certainty if any of it is true. Even if you know some of it's true, but you don't know which parts, you're still just as blind to what's true. So the truthfulness was very important for us to hammer out as a church. Second is the word I mentioned earlier, inerrancy. Inerrancy. Inerrancy means that the Bible contains, as our confession of faith says, no mixture of error, not even a little dash of error in the ingredients of the Bible. There's no mixture of any error. It's completely factual. There is a statement on inerrancy which a lot of this came out actually within the last century. So the last hundred years, which in all of history, you know, that's not very long ago. It was before any of us were alive by quite a lot, but it wasn't that long ago we were arguing about inerrancy, especially as Baptists, we were arguing about it. And one of the statements that came out of that was an affirmation of this belief. And it says this, it says inerrancy means that when all the facts in the universe are known, the scriptures, in their original autographs, so their writings and properly interpreted will be shown to be completely true in everything they affirm, whether that has to do with doctrine, which means teachings or morality, or with the social, physical or life sciences, it will all be proven completely true when everything is known. So we just spoke a minute ago, kind of, about this. What happens if there are even some errors? Again, it's the same issue. We don't know where the errors begin and end if we believe that there are some errors. But there's another issue to this that I want to point out is if there are errors and we have Christ affirming what is in here, he is affirming errors. And even though you could say maybe he's not doing it on purpose, how is he different from the politician who makes a mistake and lies? It is still lying. It is still erroneous, and so there cannot be a errors if Christ has affirmed what is written. And so that is inerrancy. Now, next is a word. Don't know. Maybe this might be a new word for you. It's infallibility or infallible. Infallibility. Now I'm looking at this and I'm like, I don't even know how to spell it. Oh, well, it's my best guess. I typed it out over here. I think I got it. Okay. Infallibility. This means that the Bible does not fail. It is infallible, which kind of foul sounds like fail. So that might be how you can remember it. Infallibility does not fail. But what does it mean? I want to hear from you. What does it mean that the Bible does not fail? What does it mean that the Bible does not fail? Caleb, everything in it is true. That's part of it. Can't be proven wrong. When you hear the word fail, does that remind you of anything, like in your regular life, what does the word fail remind you of? Sin. Sin. Okay. Anything else? Tests. Yeah, that's one. So on a test, what do you want out of the test? You don't want to fail. Right. You want to pass, which means you have a goal. Your goal is to pass and probably to ace and do as well as you can. It might depend on the subject and how good you are at that subject, but you have a goal. And the goal is. I'm not sure. Ever been to fail on your tests? Sure, we've done it. Some of us have. But that's not your goal. So what this is saying is that the Bible, the word of God, has a purpose. There is a goal, and it does not fail in that goal. Its goal is to communicate who God is and what he has taught to mankind. And it is to lead people to a knowledge of the truth. Those are the goals of the word. It does not fail in those goals. I think we can see this if you guys flip to psalm 18. Psalm 18, verse 30. Can somebody read that for us? Psalm 1830. Okay. Yep. [00:27:19] Speaker C: This God, his way is perfect. The word of the Lord proves true. He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. [00:27:26] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. His word proves true. And it's interesting that even it's connected to protection. The idea that what he says is true protects us. Now, I'm going to read from Isaiah 55 says this, for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return, there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. That's Isaiah 55, ten and eleven. God's word goes out. It has a purpose, and it will be accomplished. Now, there's a difference now between infallibility and inerrancy, which we will talk about briefly in a minute. The fourth attribute we want to talk about is consistency. So we have always believed that the word of God is consistent consistency. This basically means that inerrancy and truthfulness work across different types of writing techniques. If you've read through different books of the Bible, you may have noticed that there are different genres. Authors use different types of speech. A lot of you guys were here for when I preached through one corinthians. And there are times where Paul would even use sarcasm and irony. So the authors of the Bible, they write like real people because they were real people. And so they use different types of speech, just like you. Do you speak differently to your parents when you're being lectured or punished than you would to your friend when you're hanging out? If you are giving a presentation? You speak differently than when you're talking with your family at the dinner table. We all use different types of speech. The first type of speech which we will talk about is ordinary speech. So just ordinary. This means that scripture does not use precise, technical language and employs everyday language. I'll show you guys an example from Genesis one. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of heavens to give light on the earth. So here the Bible is talking about the sun and the moon, two great lights. Now, we know the moon technically is not producing its own light. It's reflecting light from the sun. But the Bible is using ordinary speech. We see it as a light. We're going to talk about it as a light. It is not making an error. It's just using speech like we would use. Sometimes we see loose quotations. That's another type, especially in the New Testament. Writers will quote the Old Testament sometimes word for word, sometimes paraphrase. Sometimes they'll summarize it. Sometimes they'll just allude to it. And in all of which, they might say, it is written. This, this, this as well, with translations, it is quoted differently. Just like if I quote a verse from ESV and you quote it from the NIV, it'll sound different but neither of us are wrong or misquoting it, finally or not. Finally, a couple more. The translations of Jesus sayings sometimes are different. So if you read the gospels he's teaching, and you might notice, wow. Luke quotes him as saying this, but Matthew says he says this, and they're similar but not quite the same. This is because Jesus taught in one language called Aramaic. But the gospels are written in Greek, so it's a translation. It means the same thing, but often the words end up being slightly different again, just like we have different english translations that are all good and teaching us the same thing sometimes in the gospels, and this will be pointed out, is the ordering of events is different. All of these writers, they are writing the same stories, but they are moving around what events happen when they all kind of get the crucifixion and resurrection, but everything else is jumbled. Now, this is because at the time, to write something like a biography was different. If you read a biography now, what you're probably going to read is a book that is chronological from birth to death. At the time, a biography would more so emphasize a certain portion of a person's life, and there would be a teaching purpose involved in the writing. And so they would take events that happened. They wouldn't necessarily put them in time order, chronological order. They would move them around. The events are true, but to expect them to write exactly how we would write in our day and age, in our culture, is what we would call anachronistic. It's just not how history was written. This is not how it was written. They had different standards. So those are a few of the ways. There are more that we don't have time for, but those are a few of the ways that scripture uses. Just different types of language that people think are wrong and creating errors. But it's really just different types of writing. Our third view here we'll go. These last two are quicker, is the view of. This is aggressive. I know the view of heretics. I couldn't think of a better way to make it kind of fit the theme of the view of. But the view of people that say things wrongly. You may have thought these things. Maybe you currently are wondering if these things are true. I'm not calling you a heretic. Sometimes we just need to think things through. A heretic would be someone that takes these views and teaches them as absolute truth. The first is denying the inerrancy of scripture or denying the inspiration of scripture. You can put either of those words in that blank. It is an error to deny inspiration. We've talked about it earlier because what it creates is a human book. If we deny that it is inspired, we have created a human book. Human books have errors. They cannot be completely true. Our second error is pitting infallibility against inerrancy. So I mentioned this earlier, but in the 20th century, some people said the Bible was, it's actually infallible, but it has errors. Before this, infallible just meant both things. We had to create a new word, inerrancy, to correct this error. Because people started saying, well, no, it accomplishes its purpose, but it's not necessarily all true. There are errors, but it still accomplishes its purpose. Now, this was a made up distinction so that people could reject the parts of the Bible that they didn't like and still be called christians. They would believe things like the authors made mistakes, but the important stuff is correct. But again, the problem with this is, what is the important stuff? How do you know what is right, what is wrong? It ultimately would come down to the subjective person saying, I like this, I don't like this. I like this teaching. I don't like that one. I like this story, I don't like that one. This is not Christianity. This is an objective book. The third and final heir claims that there are hundreds of mistakes in the Bible. So this is claimed all the time. It is just quite simply untrue. There are some alleged mistakes. They number less than 100, closer to 50, 50 to 60. And they're not mistakes. These are just, it just comes from certain scholars that number these things. But really there are solutions to them all. We talked about some of them even today, with the view of Jesus and what he thought about certain stories of the Bible. If you study and you look through scripture honestly, you don't find any of these errors. Now, we need to read the Bible faithfully. We must read it with faith, because anything you read, just like some of these so called scholars, you can find discrepancies if you look hard enough. The longer you look at something, the more it begins to look like whatever you want it to look like. And so we should approach the Bible with faith. If we trust the Lord and savior, the resurrected Lord, the God man, and he said what he said about the truthfulness of scripture, then that should give us faith when we read his word, because he certainly trusted it. So if we're christians, if we follow Christ, we must approach the word faithfully. Now, finally, just real quick, right now, we're going to talk about the view of your life. The fourth and final point, this is just our application section. The view of your life. How does your life view this doctrine? The truthfulness of scripture. Well, I have two main applications for you guys today. First, trust scripture. Trust it. It is true. It has no error. The resurrected Christ has affirmed it. There are parts that are more difficult for us to read or understand, but there are people even at this church that can help with more difficult passages. We've done the time of study, many, many hours, and many books read on the subject, depending on who you're asking. So there are ways to work through this, but we need to trust scripture. Living as a skeptic is no way to live. If you live as a skeptic, you'll end up as one of those philosophers that says, do I exist? Which is the most ridiculous question anyone has ever been hung up on. And those are some of the wisest people in history. Yes, you exist. You don't really need to think about it that much, but that's what happens when we live as a skeptic and we question everything. Second application is we should refute false claims so people will say some of these false things. We need to learn how to engage those and go to the scripture and address the questions that people have, because we don't just want to throw them aside. People have good questions. We want to have answers, and so do some reading. Keep studying the scripture. You're not going to have all the answers and everything understood and known by tomorrow. But as you read the word and pray, Lord will grow your ability to do that. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this time to study how your word proves true, that every word is true, and that it will accomplish its purpose. Lord, I pray that this morning it would accomplish its purpose in our midst, that it would lead us closer to Christ, help us reflect on the gospel, and it would lead those who are not christians not following you, to turn from their sins and to follow you in faith. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.