Off The Cuff (Part 1): The Bible is Full of Errors

Good morning.

Welcome to Orchard Hill.

It's great to be together.

Just before we jump into a new series that we're calling off the cuff, I want to just say a special thank you to Ken Carlson for last week, taking us to the Apostles' Creed, helping to set us up this week.

And then also I just want to say thank you in this context to Kay Warheight.

Kay served as part of our women's ministry team staff here in Wexford for about 10 years and is now on our staff in Butler County.

And so she's made that transition.

And we had a chance to celebrate her at our last core gathering.

So we aren't going to take time here, but I just wanted to acknowledge that.

And if you ever are like, what, Kay, leaving what?

If you come to core gatherings, by the way, they're listening to your program, you'll know what's going on.

Just a word.

So let me pray.

Father, thank you for a chance just to gather here together today.

And Lord, I ask that you would speak to each of us.

That you'd let my words reflect your word in content and in emphasis and in tone.

And we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Throughout my entire adult life, I have had the same basic vocation.

I've had some different jobs, but other than some odd jobs here and there, I have been a pastor or a minister since I graduated from college.

So what that means is that when I first finished college, I took a job as a youth pastor at a church.

I worked doing that for a few years, went to grad school, finished grad school, worked at a Christian college doing mission trips, took a job at a church, worked there for about a decade, came to Orchard Hill.

And so that's been what I've done.

And every time in all of those years, 20 plus years now, that I have had somebody say to me, and what do you do for a living?

I have had basically the same response.

And the response is, well, I'm a pastor or I'm a minister.

And sometimes when I'm just not feeling that, I'll say, I'm a spiritual guide, and that always leads to a different conversation.

But the reactions of people are always somewhat predictable.

As soon as I say that, some people will uh almost turn and physically walk away, especially if I'm in a party, they're like, I want to get out of here, I don't want to talk to you.

Sometimes people will do what I'd call a little virtue signaling or try to impress me with what they know.

Like, like, you know what, since you're a pastor, let me tell you about how I connected with God or what I believed.

Sometimes what they'll do is they'll ask questions, like, well, since I have you here, and I figure this is probably what doctors get all the time, like a medical doctor, like like, hey, since you're here, you know, I got this thing in my knee, could you help me with it?

Or a stockbroker, hey, I've been looking at this fund.

What do you think?

And people use it as a chance just to talk about something.

And then probably the other reaction that I get is sometimes people will tell me their objections to faith or to Christianity.

Sometimes it'll be couched in a roundabout way, sometimes it'll be very direct.

It'll just be, you know what, I used to believe, I used to go to church, but I don't, and here's why.

And they'll use it as an opportunity just to kind of vent what their objection is.

And we're calling this series off the cuff because we're going to examine five of the most common objections to faith that are often given off the cuff by people.

In other words, when they don't have a premeditated thought and they say, you say to them, why don't you believe?

These are the things that people will often say.

Maybe they're things you've struggled with, or maybe they're things that you've long since resolved, but as you interact with other people in your life, in your family, in your business, you hear these objections.

And the first one we're going to deal with is the Bible.

Because one of the objections that I hear all the time is, well, the Bible's full of heirs.

In fact, you saw it with this video that was just shot on the streets of Pittsburgh asking people, what's your opinion of the Bible?

And people would just say, Well, I think that it's basically crazy.

Because there are people who will look at the Bible and they'll say it's full of myths, it's full of propaganda, it's full of mistakes and biases, and there's no way that I could trust this.

And then on the other hand, there are people who will say the Bible is the very word of God.

And it's on this book that I can base not just my present life, but all of my eternity, because I believe that it contains the very truth, the very words of God.

Here's what 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 19 says that we had read just a few moments ago.

2 Peter 1:19

It says, we also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable.

And then he says this, you will do well to pay attention to it.

And so the question is, is this book really worth paying attention to?

Is this book something that you should say, this is reliable enough that I'm going to pay attention to it?

And I know that by quoting the book, that any first-year philosophy student or just college student could tell you that's circular reasoning.

And so I'm not pointing to the book to say it's true.

What I'm doing is I'm pointing to it to say it says pay attention because it is reliable.

It's the prophetic message of God, it is God's word.

And so the decision that you need to make, that every person needs to make, is do I believe that this contains the word of God and is the word of God or is it not?

And so that's what we're going to spend some time looking at here today.

And the first just thing that I'd like to say is this, and that is, whatever your opinion is of the Bible, whether you think it's the Word of God or not, you have to grant at least this, and that is that it is unique.

And the reason I say that it's unique is there is no book in the history of humanity that's exactly like this.

It was written over some 1,600 years by 40 different authors, and it has been over 66 different books.

It was written on different continents, and yet it has one theme.

We can't, in our current climate, get two different newspapers or magazines to cover the same political events and have the same basic take on what happened.

And yet the Bible, written over all those years by different writers, different languages, it speaks with a remarkable clarity and singularity of voice.

But it's not just unique in the way that it was put together, it's unique in its circulation.

Meaning there are no other books that I'm aware of that have been translated into as many languages, sold as many copies, stayed on the bestseller list for as long as they have, and have made their way to be read and circulated and studied in so many places.

The Bible's unique in its durability, despite the fact that there are many over the years who've tried to take the voice of the Bible and make it irrelevant.

The Bible continues to thrive, especially in places where it's seen as being illegal or something that people shouldn't have.

And the Bible's unique in its impact in people's lives.

Today, all over the world, literally, people in beautiful large auditoriums like this in storefronts and rented schools in huts will gather and they'll study this book.

And what they'll do when they study this book is they'll say, I'm studying this book because I believe that this book has the answers to the questions that are most important in this life.

And so whether you believe the Bible or not, you at least have to grant that the Bible is unique.

And having said that it's unique does not make it true, but it does lead us to two questions.

And these are the two questions that I think we see in 2 Peter chapter 1, and that is is this book reliable and is it authoritative or divine, inspired?

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

And we see the first question, is it reliable?

Hinted at in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 19 and 20, because here the affirmation or the assertion that it's reliable is made very clearly.

2 Peter 1:19

He says, We have this prophetic message as something completely reliable.

You do well to pay attention to it.

As to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation.

You see, when people throughout our culture want to relegate the Bible to a place of irrelevance, whether it's a conscious or a subconscious decision, what they'll often do is they'll say, Well, you can't trust it.

It's full of errors.

And so the question that has to be asked and answered is, is the Bible reliable?

Can you trust it?

And usually when people will say the Bible's full of errors, they'll have one of five different things in mind.

The first is that they'll say, Well, it's errant in the way that it was put together.

And what they mean when they say that usually is that you can't believe that the Bible was written when it said it was written, by who it said it was written by, and that it's reliable.

In other words, they'll say this was put together by later editors who have taken the manuscripts and manipulated them to give a story that they want to get, often so that one group of people could oppress or hold down another group of people.

But here's what happens if you go to a university, just about any university, and you take a basic philosophy class, you'll be handed a copy of, actually, you won't be handed anything, you'll have to go to the store and buy a copy of Plato or Aristotle and read Plato and Aristotle when you take your first philosophy class in college.

And when you take that class and you take Plato and Aristotle, almost nobody says, I don't believe that Plato actually existed, that Plato actually wrote this, that Plato's republic is his document.

Now, why does nobody ask that question?

Well, the reason we don't ask that question is because we have manuscript evidence that Plato was written by Plato.

And because of how it comes together.

Now, the reason I choose Plato and Aristotle is they were roughly in the same time period as the New Testament.

Do you know how many manuscripts we have of Plato?

We have seven, depending on exactly how you count, but it certainly isn't varied by much.

And they date some 1200 years after the time of Plato.

Do you know how many manuscripts we have of Aristotle?

We have five.

And they date some 1,400 years after the time of Aristotle.

So don't you think it would be great if Christians could say, you know what, we have have 20 or 30 manuscripts of the New Testament and they date maybe 500 years.

Do you know how many we have?

There are over 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament, many of which date within 100 years of the time.

In other words, if you accept for a moment that Plato and Aristotle were written by Plato and Aristotle and are from that time, the only reasonable thing to do would be to say, well, John, when he wrote the gospel, is John, and it was written in the time frame in which he claimed to have written.

And here's why this is important, because if somebody says, you know what, I can't trust the Bible because the origins just don't make sense, they haven't actually studied the evidence of that.

Now, some people will say, okay, look, I'll grant the origins, but the Bible is full of just flat out inaccuracies and mistakes.

It says things that just simply aren't true.

And certainly when somebody holds this position, they usually have one or two arguments in their back pocket that they like to take out and say, well, there, here, prove this.

But usually what you will find is that those statements are statements that have more to do with the use of language, poetic language, or normal language than they do the actual factualness of the statement.

So let me just take it out of the land of the Bible and bring it to our day.

So this is concert season here in Pittsburgh.

Um, you know, we have uh winter and concert season.

And so uh this last weekend there was Dave Matthews, there was Kenny Chesney here in Pittsburgh.

So at the Kenny Chesney concert, if that was your thing, um evidently there were like 45,000 people at Heinz Field to watch Kenny Chesney.

Now, if I say there were 45,000 people at the Kenny Chesney concert, nobody says, Oh, you're wrong.

There were not 45,000 people, there were 44,978.

You are wrong.

What you do is say, oh yeah, we have 45,000.

Or if somebody says, you know what, the sunrise this morning was beautiful, you don't go, oh no, no, no, no.

The sun did not rise, the earth turns, the sun does not rise.

What you do instead is you grant normal language, you grant 45,000 people, you grant saying it was a beautiful sunrise.

Most of the things that people point to in the Bible as being inaccurate can be accounted to in the idea of language.

Now, there are some others, and those things would require more careful study than we're going to do here today.

But I can tell you, if you will look and research it and even just type into Google the alleged discrepancies, you will find very satisfactory answers to almost all of them.

Now, some will say, well, okay, maybe it isn't that, but but the Bible just records things that are too outlandish to be true.

There's these miracles.

They couldn't be true.

And so people will say there's impossibilities or there's miracles.

Again, let me just take this out of the realm of the Bible.

If I were to go to Moraine State Park and say that I was going to walk on the water because I was bored.

Now, if you're not from this area, again, Moraine is a little north of here, has a large lake.

It freezes in the winter, it's June, it tried to stay frozen a long time, but but it's not frozen.

So to walk on water at Moraine State Park right now would truly be miraculous.

And if I said to you, you know what?

Yesterday I was out and we walked, I walked across Moraine State or across the lake there.

Do you know what you would do?

You'd say, No, you didn't.

That's crazy.

You're crazy.

People don't walk on water, it didn't happen.

But here's how the New Testament was written, and there's a really scholarly book that talks about this.

It's called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, written by Richard Baucom.

And he talks about how the use of names, especially in the gospels but throughout the New Testament, was basically like footnoting the events that took place.

So it would be like me saying, hey, I went to Moraine State Park and I walked on water.

And let me give you names of people that you would actually know here in the community who could testify that I walked on water and you could go and check it out.

In other words, the miraculous stories were verified within a hundred years where these things would have been just laughed out of existence if there weren't some truth to it.

Now, some will say, okay, maybe the miraculous is okay, but what about just the contradictions of the Bible?

Where there's inconsistencies and discrepancies, things that it says in one place and then it says something different somewhere else.

And again, I'm not going to take the time to delve into all of those kinds of discrepancies, but again, a simple reading and research will show you that almost every one of those discrepancies you can resolve.

But here's really the issue that I think for many becomes the issue of why they would say the Bible's not reliable, and that is for many people they just simply don't like what the Bible says.

There's a little bit for some that says, you know what, when I look at the Bible, what I see is I see things that it says, and I say, I don't much care for that, so therefore I don't believe the Bible.

But let me just ask you this.

If the Bible's really a creation of God, wouldn't you expect that there would be some things that you wouldn't like?

In other words, wouldn't you expect that that if it's really the word of God, that there would be some things that you wouldn't say, oh yeah, that's exactly what I thought, or that's exactly how I think it should be, or I that's my best thinking on it.

Don't you think that if it's the word of God that there would be some places where it would bring dissonance to your own life, there would be some tension.

And all I'm really trying to do here is just say, all of the things that people charge the Bible with being inaccurate or full of airs, there are good answers to.

And so it is possible for you, for me, to say the Bible is reliable, it's trustworthy.

Now, to be fair, that doesn't mean that it's authoritative, that it's inspired, that it's divine.

It just means that it's reliable.

I have some sons who are in school, and when they bring home their math book, as far as I know, that math book is reliable, it's full of facts and truth.

That doesn't make it divine, doesn't make it authoritative.

And that really leads to the second question.

And that is is the Bible divine?

Is it inspired?

Is it authoritative?

And here's what we read in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 21.

2 Peter 1:21

Says this, for prophecy never had its origin in human will.

But prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And so the assertion here, when it's talking about the prophetic word, is it's saying it's the Spirit of God that moved people to write and record the very words of God.

Here's a more direct way that this is stated.

2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16.

2 Timothy 3:16

All scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

So this is all scripture comes from the very breath of God.

Now, again, I realize that to point to what the Bible says and say the Bible claims for this to be so doesn't make it so that that's circular reasoning.

But here's why this is important.

If the Bible didn't claim to be the words of God, you wouldn't even have the conversation, you wouldn't even have to think about it.

But because it claims to be the word of God, what you must at least do at a bare minimum is say, Is this truly God's word?

And because it makes a claim to be, if it isn't, then the alternative isn't it's a good book full of morals that help people live good lives, but it's a fraud.

But if you can come and say, I see that this could really be reliable and divine, then you can start to say this really makes sense is God's word.

So why can we believe that the Bible is authoritative or inspired or divine because it claims to be, but secondly, I would say because of prophecy.

Now, you notice the word in 2 Peter chapter 1, where uh several times it says prophecy or prophetic word.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

And today, when people use prophecy, they use it in a variety of ways.

Some people mean prophetic, they mean that when somebody gets an impression from God that they speak, and it could be or could not be right or wrong.

In the day of Jesus, nobody understood prophecy that way.

When they use the word prophecy, they mean something that was spoken and was definitively God's word, and to be wrong meant that a person could be stoned.

And again, if you've granted now the origins of the Bible, that it was written when it said over the period of time, here's what's striking is that there were things written and prophesied thousands of years before they happened, and they happened with incredible precision.

Let me just again take this out of the Bible.

If I were to say to you, it's June of 2018, if I were to say to you, you know what, in the fall, the Steelers are gonna play the Ravens on such and such a date.

And here's how the game's going to go.

The Steelers will win by this much, here's who's gonna score the touchdowns, here's how many receptions Antonio Brown will have, how many yards, here's all the stuff that will happen.

It would be amazing if I had it all right.

You'd be like, unbelievable, couldn't have just happened.

But now let's just take that a step further.

What if I were to tell you, I'm going to predict a game in 2019?

Now, 2019, the opponents aren't all fully known yet.

We know some of them, but not all of them.

We certainly don't know the dates of the game, so if I got a date right for a game and it was able to articulate which players would do what, it would be miraculous.

In fact, if you were a betting person, you'd want to bet against my prophecy.

But here's what happened in the case of the Bible.

Not just one, but hundreds of those prophecies came true, and not just a year and a half away, but thousands of years away.

In other words, the Bible is full of such precision when it comes to this that there is no explanation other than the fact to say that there had to be a divine hand.

There had to be the breath of God in these prophecies for them to come true with this kind of precision.

There's no other explanation.

And then there are prophecies that aren't even just fulfilled.

The Bible itself, but prophecies made about events outside of the Bible that came true, such as the destruction of a city, that you can go and get a secular resource that will talk about like the city of Tyre and how there would never be anything built on it, and how now there's nothing built there.

All of that just to say what you and I hold in our hands when we hold this collection of writings that we call the Bible, we hold something that has incredible precision that makes it likely to say this is indeed inspired or divine.

Not only is there prophecy, but I think Jesus' testimony is significant here.

Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says this, and again, I realize if you are not certain of your own faith journeys, appealing to Jesus may not appeal to you.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

But here's what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 17.

Matthew 5:17

He says, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law.

Jesus saying this, saying that this law, this book, contains the very words of God.

So if you see Jesus as any kind of a religious leader, any bit of his credibility is tied back to this book.

And not only does he just say that as a religious leader, but as the one who came to this earth, went to a cross, died, came back to life, which is different than all other religious leaders.

And so Jesus believed this book.

But I have one more reason to believe that this book is inspired, that it's divine, that it's authoritative.

And that is because it's true about me.

It's true about you.

You see, most religious writings are similar to the Bible in this, in that they tell us how to live a good, ethical, and moral life and urge us to live a good, ethical, moral life, and tell us that if we do, that then we have promises of eternity.

The Bible tells us to live a good, ethical, and moral life, but it also tells us that we will fail, that no matter how well we live, that we'll come short of that standard, and even when we uphold the standard, that the way that we uphold the standard isn't quite right, and that what we actually need is not the law to tell us how to live, but a savior to save us from the law, a substitute, and that is precisely what Jesus is.

And so what the Bible is, is not this crushing moral, ethical rule book for us, but it is a story of God's redeeming, beautiful love for us in Jesus Christ, where he says, I have done for you what you can never do.

Now you may push back.

In fact, I know in any church gathering that there are people who say, you know what, I like my religion.

In fact, there's people who aren't even religious who like their religion.

They won't call it religion, but they like their morality.

You saw it on the video.

You know what, I've got my own standard, I've got my own way of thinking.

You know what that is?

That's self-righteousness, just like a religious person has self-righteousness.

But here's what is true about you and me that the Bible is so precise in talking about, and that is all of our goodness is jacked up.

Isaiah says, all of your righteousness is like a filthy rag, that it's like the dirtiest, kind of the most disgusting towel that you can imagine.

Says that that's your righteousness.

And the Apostle Paul, writing in Romans, says says that our sin is ultimately pervasive.

Because all of us have sinned and come short of God's glory.

And the reason this is so important is because every other religious writing simply tells you to do better and try harder, but it's the Christian writing that says, do better, try harder, but recognize you will fail.

And as you fail, you have a savior, you have a substitute.

I was thinking about this the other day, and I was remembering a couple years ago, every summer we have this great event here called Kids Fest.

A thousand, a couple thousand volunteers, kids, um, staff coming together just for this great event.

We'll have Kids Fest this year in the Strip District in Butler County and Haiti as well, uh, just different experiences of it uh scaled differently.

But but when it's here, this campus is overrun for the month of July.

And there was one day I was I was coming on the campus and I recognized that there was a mess of trash, and I just stopped and I started to pick it up and put it in the in the trash receptacle.

And here's what happened for me in that moment.

I was picking it up, I was putting it away, and then I thought, I hope somebody sees me do this.

I'm being a servant right now.

I mean, this isn't my job.

I'm the senior pastor.

I shouldn't have to pick up trash.

No, no, no, why?

What's going on in me?

All my righteousness, even my good stuff, is tainted.

Even when I stop to be a servant, I can hardly do it without saying, I hope somebody sees me as a servant.

The Bible's true in what it says about you, it's true in what it says about me.

And the story, the beautiful story, is that Jesus recognizes that and is the substitute.

So what's the implication of this?

Well, if the Bible is inspired, if it's divine, if it's authoritative, what this means is that there is no other truth that you and I can look to that can usurp or transcend the truth of the word of God.

And what that means is that if I or if you disbelieve or disobey any part of the Bible, what we're doing is we're disbelieving or disobeying God.

And here's why that is so striking, because the way that so many people today try to get out of kind of the implications of the Bible is what verse 20 of 2 Peter chapter 1 talks about, when it says, there is no private interpretation.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Today, what people do is they try to have their own interpretation.

They try to say, you know what, I'm going to interpret it this my way.

And a couple of my friends and I, we think this, and we found one scholar online in some off-beat place who believes this too.

But here's why we stand in a tradition here at Orchard Hill.

We stand in the reformed tradition.

And that doesn't mean that we agree with every reformer or every thought that's ever been, but we don't have a private interpretation.

Meaning, it's not just how Orchard Hill sees things.

We stand in a long line of people proudly and say, not the church tradition is everything, but but there's no private interpretation here.

What we believe is what's been believed for centuries.

And if you get to a point where you start to say, you know what, we know better than the people who went before us, we know better than anybody else.

We have it right.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't disagreements, but what's happening is you're getting your own private interpretation.

But if this book is reliable, if it's inspired to disbelieve or disobey this book, is to disbelieve or disobey God, and to take any truth as its equal or as surpassing it, is to downgrade the very word of God.

But let me just ask you this.

Some of you are saying, okay, I kind of see it, but I'm not sure I agree with it.

What's your alternative?

What are you going to orient your life around?

Will it be the latest popular psychology bestseller?

Will it be your own kind of conglomerate of philosophical thoughts?

Will it be just what you think about when you sit down in your chair and you just say, I'm just gonna think deep thoughts?

Let me just ask you, have you ever been wrong when you thought your own deep thoughts?

Did you ever make a bad decision out of that?

What's your alternative?

Are you gonna take popular speakers and thinkers and their worldview and say, that's what I'm going to take as my alternative?

You see, ultimately, and this is again why here at Orchard Hill, we we unapologetically say we're about the Bible, about teaching it, because this is not about my opinions or the opinions of other teachers here.

This is ultimately about what the Word of God says.

And from it, we're rebuked, we're challenged, we're corrected.

We gain perspective on the past, we gain insight for our present day and hope for our future.

We learn how to be better spouses, better kids, better parents, better citizens, citizens who bring good to the world and speak justice into our world.

It's from this book that we become the people that God intended us to be.

So, if not this book, what?

What will you use as your source of authority?

Father, we thank you for a chance just to gather here and to consider the truthfulness of your word.

And God, we affirm today as a church community that the Bible is inspired, that it's authoritative, that it's reliable.

And God, for those who who are gathered and say, I'm not sure I can grant that, I pray that you would let your Holy Spirit bring a convicting work about its reliability.

And we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.