How Can We Trust The Bible?

Hard Questions: “How can we trust the Bible – Don’t you know what’s in there?!”
Psa. 19:7-14

Three needs to be addressed:
1. For the believer who has been deeply shaken by someone else’s questions.
2. For the believer who wants to answer questions genuinely blocking faith in a friend.
3. For the skeptic who hears that there are such problems in the Bible and wants answers before proceeding.

Importance of Scripture:
1. Our means of knowing the Story.
2. The medium of knowing about Jesus and his life, suffering, death, and resurrection.
3. The source of all our hope.

Authority & Reliability of Scripture
2 Timothy 3:16–17 NASB
“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”

Hebrews 4:12 NASB
“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Credibility of Scripture
1. Questions about the history narrated in the Bible.
2. Questions about the miracles described in the Bible.
3. Questions about the apparent contradictions in the Bible.
4. Questions about the ethics of…
a. Hoping for the deaths of babies among the Babylonians
b. God’s desire both for the repentance and for the destruction of the wicked.

Objections to the reliability and therefore the potential authority of the Bible fall into three categories:

1. Premodern objections:
a. Muslims and Hindus will object to the Bible based on their commitment to their own sacred writings.
b. A typical objection by Muslims…Jews and Christians changed the story.
Solution: In 1948, scrolls and scroll fragments were discovered near the Dead Sea in Palestine; those scrolls confirmed the content of the Old Testament Hebrew texts and are dated some 1,000 years before the earliest documents previously known. They preceded the time of Jesus, so there were no Christians around to change the stories in the Old Testament. The earliest New Testament documents were close enough in date to the first century original documents that “changing the story” would have been impossible: there were too many eye-witnesses still living to get away with invention.

2. Modern objections:
a. Historical contradictions: Luke’s record of Jesus’ birth declares that Quirinius was the Governor: prote = “prior”, or an early role of Quirinius there, now lost to us.
b. Scientific impossibilities:
Joshua stopped the sun in the sky to extend the time required to win a battle? 10:12-14
3. Postmodern objections:
a. Who can know what the Bible says, since everything is a matter of interpretation?
i. Either—everyone seems to have a different take on the same statements.
ii. Or—words have no meaning in themselves, only the reader gives meaning.
1. Rooted in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein—since there is no God who can declare reality and therefore give meaning to words, there can be no meaning intrinsically a part of words.
2. BUT—if there is no meaning other than the meaning that I give a text, how could you object to any meaning that I give to the text????
b. Who can teach me, since teaching implies knowing and implies authority and all authority is an EXPRESSION of POWER and is therefore wrong.
i. All the problems of the world stem from this desire to exert power over other human beings.
ii. BUT—how can YOU, then, TEACH me that NO ONE teach anyone else; do YOU have a special authority over us, to TEACH US that WE CAN’T TEACH or exert influence over others?
iii. If there were a BENEVOLENT GOD, wouldn’t it be right and moral if He were to teach us, to influence us to care for the earth, to care for one another, to love Him back?
c. Can’t we all just get along? What about unethical commands in Scripture/what about vengeance verbalized?
i. The perceived difficulties are many…
Psa. 137:8 O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one,
How blessed will be the one who repays you
With the recompense with which you have repaid us.
Psa. 137:9 How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock.
ii. BUT—careful attention, reading the NT for insight, considering the wisdom of others who have given their lives to similarly careful study of Scripture…
1. Hard Sayings of the Bible, by Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Peter H. Davids, F. F. Bruce and Manfred T. Brauch.
2. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason Archer
3. Big Book of Bible Difficulties, The: Clear and Concise Answers from Genesis to Revelation, Thomas Howe & Norman L. Geisler
4. Is The Bible Intolerant? Amy Orr-Ewing

4. Practical objections:
a. Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
b. Love your neighbour as yourself: encourage, nurture, care for, weep with, rejoice with…
c. Take up your cross and follow me.
d. Give ten percent of your income (22.3), give generously.
GK. Chesterton: not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found hard and not tried.
Consequently, many reject the Bible’s authority because of its moral demands, only using supposed historical, scientific issues as smokescreen.
1. Make sure you understand the question
2. Make sure you understand the questions behind the question.
3. Make sure you are reading the Bible…in order to love the Bible…
Jeremiah 15:16 NASB
“Thy words were found and I ate them,
And Thy words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart;
For I have been called by Thy name,
O Lord God of hosts.”