After Amen

And we really want to learn more. We always hopefully want to learn, but then also apply what we know. And my hope for you is that you will take this as an opportunity to really build the foundation in your faith. We're going to look at some essentials, some things that we need to understand a little more deeply, and we're going to start with really the Bible. Have you ever been lost without a map? That can be a scary thing. Almost impossible today because of GPS in our phones and all of that. But many years ago, actually 40 years ago, I found myself with some buddies and we were at the Catoosa Wildlife Management Area. This is on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. It's about 96,000 acres. And I was going up there with three other guys, and I don't mean to offend anybody, but we were going hunting. But don't worry, all right? No animal even came close to being remotely harmed on that trip. We get out and we each go a different direction and I go up that mountain and I think, "Oh, there's a nice area over there. Well, I'll sit there a while. Maybe something will come out and it'll be a good, great thing." Did it come out? No. Am I patient enough to sit there and endure that? No. So I'm meandering around. "Over here. Oh, this place will be better." Well, I'm scaring off anything that could ever come close. And then first thought, "Man, I wonder how to get back." I didn't know. I didn't have anything. There was no satellite phone, there's no GPS. There's not anything. And so I just figured out that if I would just keep working my way, I guess, down the mountain, hopefully I would hit a road at some point somewhere. Well, obviously I made it out, but I'm telling you, the later it got, the darker it started getting, the more emotional I was, the more fearful I became. And really in life, God doesn't want you to be lost. He gives us a map. He wants us to have it. He wants us to have direction for our life. And when you really look at the history of the world from a biblical worldview, what we find is God, of course, creating mankind in His image, wanting and desiring a relationship, yet giving Adam and Eve the ability to choose. They chose selfishly. They made the wrong choice that disconnected humanity from God. Since then, God has been revealing Himself. He's been reaching out, trying to provide a map for humanity, really, to be in relationship with Him. It's what He created. It's what He intended. So God, first of all, He revealed Himself individually. We see as we progress through the Bible, He reveals Himself to Abraham and says, "Through you, I'm going to choose you to be my people, and I'm going to multiply your descendants." And then we have throughout the history of the Old Testament, God speaking to the people, revealing Himself and the map, if you will, through the prophets. All of that is being recorded and so forth and kept. And then in the Old Testament, the Old Testament points to this one thing, that one day God was going to send the Messiah, the Savior. And they tried to understand, they tried to put the prophecies together, but all of it points to this one singular thing. Well, Jesus Christ fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy. You see, the tangible authority for humanity, early on it was God revealing Himself in a personal way to certain people. Then the prophets had this sort of tangible authority to direct and guide the people. And then, the Old Testament, that was held as sacred, but it pointed to the one who would fulfill it, and that would be Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate revelation of who God is. He is part of the Godhead, one in three, three in one, or otherwise known as the Trinity. We're going to talk about that in this series. Jesus revealed Himself. He fulfilled the Old Testament. And then when Jesus finished His work, He said that He was going to send a comforter, the Holy Spirit, that would basically validate the apostles. And the Holy Spirit became the authorities. He worked in primarily the apostle lives in the New Testament. So what they said, the letters that Paul wrote and so forth, the scripture of the New Testament, it was assembled, it was regarded highly by the church, and it was the tangible authority for all matters of faith and practice. And so we hold the Bible in very high esteem. We should. It is not to be worshipped. It is not an object of worship, but it is a map that God gave us that gives us instruction for our lives. God wants us to succeed. And I want you to see this in scriptureBy the way, there are some that would tell you that experience is the authority. What you personally experience, the way you feel, the way you're moved, that should be the authority for your life. Others will tell you that some organization or the church itself needs to be the authority for all matters of faith and practice. But that's not so. It is the Bible that is the authority. Ultimately Jesus, but that's the tangible authority we have. So, what's that mean? I need to understand it. I need to figure it out. Look with me in the New Testament, 2 Timothy 2:14-17. "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and become convinced of, because you know that those from whom you learned it." In other words, you know them. You know what I've told you is true. He said, hang on these things. Verse 15, "And how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." Well, if the Bible is important and it's to be used as a tool like that, then the question becomes, can I trust the Bible? Because there's a lot of critics. A lot of people would say no, because of this reason or that reason and they seemingly have their research. But I would challenge them to really look at it. I'll just say this right off the bat. I believe that Christianity, the reality of the resurrection, the historicity of the Bible, the accuracy there, is not just a blind faith. There's absolutely very good reasons that it is true, and it means what it says, and we're going to go through some of that. But look, what I can do in this amount of time is really very little. I'm just going to ask you to kind of hold on and we're going to do a cursory look here. I'm going to give you, first of all, five reasons of why the Bible can be trusted. But here's what I really want you to do if you want to grow your faith. First of all, if you're a skeptic, I would encourage you, please look at the resource that I'm about to mention. If you're a follower of Jesus, I want you to know why you believe what you believe, and be able to, not that this really needs defense, but to be able to defend it. So it helps, again, provide a foundation for your faith. But the resource that I want to recommend, it's Wesley Huff, two Fs in Huff, wesleyhuff.com. And he is one of the most articulate, youngest scholar, historian, linguist, that communicates very well. In fact, I want you to see about two and a half minutes here of the introduction of his series, "Can I Trust the Bible?" Take a look. With all the work that you've done in seminary, with your doctoral work in the area of theology and manuscripts, what got you interested in the Bible? I realized that I was engaging with a lot of people, with Muslims, with Mormons, with Jehovah's Witnesses, skeptics of all different stripes. All of them would resort to some sort of, "Well, that sounds great, Wes, but all you're relying on is the Bible. That's your foundation, and you can't trust that. All you have are translations of translations of translations. All you have are error-ridden copies. You don't even know if you have the right books. You're reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but have you ever heard of the Gospel of Thomas?" And so, I realized that that was a genuine critique, if it was true. If that was true, I'm staking my entire life on the person of Jesus, and where do I find the information about Jesus? I find that in the Bible. And if I can't trust the Bible, I really have no reason to put my hope and trust in Jesus. Hey, Andy Steiger here. Wes Huff. We are on our way to the airport, heading to Egypt to talk about the Bible. There's all the confusion about the Bible, what it is, where it came from. Can we trust it? Because the Bible didn't always look like this. The word Bible comes from the Greek word for books. But where did this mini ancient library of books come from? What we call the Bible was put together over 1,600 years on three continents by close to 40 authors in three different languages. Some of its writers were kings, others teachers, shepherds, and fishermen. The early Christians inherited the Jewish scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, a collection composed of the same 39 books we have in the first portion of our Bibles. Contrary to what many believe or have heard, the New Testament books were not chosen or voted on, but instead were recognized as the writings closest to the community surrounding Jesus. What we actually have is a direct connection to the life and teaching of Jesus. Jesus's disciples mentored others, who we call the Apostolic Fathers, who then comment on what books did or didn't have a history going back to the words and teachings of Jesus. Okay, I know that's a lotBut it's worth your time. And I'm going to go over five reasons here, and I want you to use your listing guide. Some of the references I don't expect you all to completely get, and there is an error on your listing guide. All right? Actually, number one is number four on your listing guide, but it's right on the screens. And it is, why can I trust the Bible? The Bible can be trusted because it is filled with prophecies that God keeps. This is predictive prophecies. There are things in the Bible that were prophesied about many, many years ago that actually have been documented that are true, and I just want to go over a couple of those with you. First of all, the idea of messianic prophecy is that all of these prophecies in some way, for the most part, point to the reality that God would send a savior at a certain point in time in history when God determined that time to be. And so they're referred to as messianic prophecies. It is unique. It is impossible. It is not just an act of coincidence that Jesus Christ filled those prophecies. And it's more than something that could be linked together. It's more than something that could be sort of, okay, now we're going to reinvent maybe the story to make it conform to Jesus. Let me give you some examples. In the 41st Psalm, verse nine, it talks about the betrayal of Jesus. It refers to Jesus being betrayed by a close friend, which we know was Judas Iscariot. That was 1,000 years prior to the betrayal. Five hundred years prior to the betrayal, as Zechariah, the prophet Zechariah, chapter 11, verses 12 and 13, stated that he would be betrayed for the cost of 30 pieces of silver. That is exactly what we see fulfilled in the New Testament. Seven hundred years before Jesus was crucified, the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 53, prophesied about this Messiah being a suffering servant and describes the crucifixion down to a T. It moves me to read Isaiah 53. I'd like to read it. I don't have time, but the description, and when we know and we read about what Jesus went through on the cross, it's as if Isaiah was there. Well, for me, that gives me confidence that Jesus was not just some man, he was not just some prophet or rabbi, he was in fact the Son of God. And do you realize that Jesus Christ himself, he self-predicts his own resurrection. He does that multiple times in various locations, and he tells them he is going to rise from the dead, and that was fulfilled. And the power of that is people think, "Oh, well, this is just some conspiracy or something that these disciples maybe come up with to preserve their movement." No, it was not. They were scattered. They were distraught. They were not pulled together until the resurrected Jesus appeared to them, and then it says that he was on the Earth 40 days. The Bible tells us in one place that more than 500 people witnessed the resurrected Jesus at one time. And so for 40 days, he was on the Earth, and that's why Christianity grew the way it did. It was because it was rooted in the eyewitness accounts that were thus recorded in the Gospel. The second reason we can trust the Bible is because it's rooted in real history. Do you realize that Christianity is built on public historical claims? It wasn't a fairy tale. Once upon a time in a land far away. No, it is very specific, and it is accurate in people, places, locations. Give you one example here, and this was 700 years prior in Micah chapter five, verse two. I want you to see how specific this is. It says there that Bethlehem would be the birthplace of the Messiah. It doesn't just say Bethlehem, it says Bethlehem Ephrathah, and that is because in ancient Israel, there were two Bethlehems. But this one is the distinct one. It is in the southern part of Judea. It is the place where Jesus was born and was also the ancient city of King David's family, which was a fulfillment of prophecy, and that's exactly where the Bible records that Jesus was born. I think the specificity of what we find in historyWhich is validated by new discoveries. It shows us that this is not just a narrative, it is not just a literary source, but this is a real record. It is understood and can be verified in different places throughout history. Here's the third reason. It's been carefully preserved. You can trust the Bible because it's been carefully preserved. There is the idea that scripture, if you have all of these streams coming together and all the different authors and so forth, then surely the accuracy, if it was transferred by scribes, copied over and over again, then the message is somehow going to be distorted. That we don't have what is called the original autographs, the original letters that the apostles and the prophets wrote. But it's going to have editorial additions and it's like the telephone game, things are going to change. But that's not so. I'll tell you how we know that. So there was a significant discovery between 1946 and 1956. It's called the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dead Sea Scrolls were really like a mic drop on the whole question of the accuracy of the transmission down through all of these years. Because what was found, by the way, the Dead Sea Scrolls, there were like 900 manuscripts and tens of thousands of fragments. These discoveries, it wasn't all religious, it wasn't all Bible, it was an incredible discovery, but it had a lot of the biblical text. One of those discoveries was the Great Scroll of Isaiah. Now let me tell you why this is significant. It is because this predated the earliest full manuscript we had of the Book of Isaiah by almost 1,000 years, 125 BC. And it was determined that it was 98% accurate. Exactly. To what we had 1,000 years later, the transmission and so forth was intact. And there was nothing, even the minor things were so insignificant. One example would be, for example, the way we talk about language is, "The boy ran down the road." And it may have said, "Down the road the boy ran." No change in substance, no change in significance whatsoever. And the beauty of the manuscripts, all the manuscripts and the fragments that we have, it can be verified and determined what was, if there was additions and so forth. I'm just telling you, this is a phenomenal thing, and you may not realize it, but the Dead Sea Scrolls, the discovery that helped prove that God has preserved His word. And I really believe that we don't have those autographs originally because God doesn't want us to be idolaters. He wants us to see and understand that the scripture is a map for our lives. There is the fourth reason. It teaches one connected story. Again, you saw in the video, 40 different authors over 1,600 years across three continents and three different languages. Listen, statistically, a decentralized library like that would have a lot of conflicting stories, conflicting heroes, heroines, villains, that sort of thing, but that is just not so. It maintains this singular thread, this thematic focus on God renewing humanity through the Messiah. And then finally, the fifth reason. We can trust the Bible because it's confirmed by what we discover. You realize that at least 60 figures and characters mentioned in the Bible, we didn't know of their existence until the Bible told us who they were. Over 60, though, have then since been verified by secular sources and research that these people actually existed. Archeology shows us a lot of confirming things about locations and people all the time, and it's ongoing. There was another discovery of a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by the way, in 2019, so there's still more to be learned, but what's the point of this? It all points back that the Bible is trustworthy. But then that's good, and I hope you have that confidence. I hope that you believe that. And if so, what difference should that make in my life? WellYou need to make the Bible an everyday part of your life. Three things here quickly, and I'm about out of time, but I want to encourage you. Let it challenge what feels true to you, because our feelings will betray us. Just our carnal, sinful, human nature, what we feel is often wrong. As a matter of fact, in Proverbs chapter 16, verse 25, and then Proverbs 14, verse 12 say the same thing. And it says, "There's a way which seems right to a person, but the end leads to death." God wants us to have his wisdom. He wants us to have this map so that we can know him and know salvation. In the passage we just read in 2 Timothy, it says, what's scripture for? It's useful. It's useful. Why? To make you wise for salvation, for helping you, for training you in righteousness. That means we should secondly make it our foundation. Make it a foundation, not just your inspiration. "Oh, man, I feel bad," and so forth. "I need to read something encouraging." And you read the scripture and you get all warm and fuzzy, but no, it's more than that. No, this is instruction for life. This is how you live. If you really want to succeed, if you want to get ahead, then it means that you focus on it, and it's not just something that's there that you know rolls around in your mind, but it's something that transforms you over time because you are applying it. The third thing here is just do what it says. Believe it enough. It's not just a good book. Oh, you respect it. Well, if you really believe it, if you think this is and you're coming into agreement with me, I can trust the Bible, then by all means, you ought to utilize it in your life. It's something that it's so important. I'll say this very quickly. I've told this story before, but my in-laws, I think Waze is the greatest thing in the world. Waze has very rarely ever let me down. I'm riding from Canton, Georgia. We're doing a nostalgia memory tour through Atlanta. It's so painful. I said, "Can we just use Waze?" "Well, we know the way to go." I said, "Waze knows more than what you know. It knows the traffic patterns. It knows this. It knows where the police are." Hey, I'm just saying, this is a good tool. Well, I listened to them go back and forth the entire time. It was miserable. Why? Because we just wouldn't follow the map that was there, that was provided for us. God's given us His word. All right? He gives us the Bible. We have so many resources. If we just read it and start doing it, your life would change. It would change from, "Okay, I feel good. It's all warm and fuzzy. It's a great worship experience," to Monday, your life being different, you making a difference and feeling the significance that God wants you to feel as His child, to know in confidence as His child. Here's my challenge to you. The next step is make reading and applying God's word part of your everyday life. Use YouVersion. Pick a plan and set a reminder for you. There's so many tools, but we just got to be willing to do it. Do you trust it? Will you research, check me out on what I've said? All right? Make sure, check out wesleyhough.com and start reading and applying the Bible. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thank you for the fact that you love us and that you do provide us a map. God, I pray that we would embrace you. For anyone that has not yet committed their lives to you, I pray that, God, you'd give them the courage and the boldness to seek out answers to their questions. But God, for all of us, may we go deeper in our faith with you. Help us to understand and apply the Bible. In Jesus' name, amen.