Can We Really Trust What the Bible Says About Jesus?
2 Timothy 3:16-17
Introduction
I would like to read you a quote from Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code, about the Bible and then take the rest of our time to tell you the story of the Bible we read today.
“The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven… The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.
Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic inspirational leader the world has ever seen. As the prophesied Messiah, Jesus toppled kings, inspired millions, and founded new philosophies. As a descendant of the lines of King Solomon and King David, Jesus possessed a rightful claim to the throne of the King of the Jews. Understandably, His life was recorded by thousands of followers across the land…. More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them…. The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.”
If you are going to attempt to disprove something, what do you do? You go for the jugular. The jugular vein of the Christian faith, in my opinion, is the Bible. Our faith begins with the Bible; how? We begin with a presupposition that the Bible is true and therefore we believe the stories and propositions in it are true. If you are trying to discredit the stories contained in the Bible then you must begin by first discrediting the Bible. This is exactly what Dan Brown’s book attempts to do.
I want to share the story of how we got the Bible we use today so that you can decide if indeed we can trust what the Bible says about Jesus.
The Bible is a work of 66 books with the combined authorship of about 40 different people representing thousands of years in history. It literally took several thousand years for the Bible to be constructed into the book we have today. The word “Bible” comes from the Greek word, “biblion” which means “papyrus scroll.”
But what makes this book so different than the millions of other religious books out there? The Church as well as the early church fathers testify that it is supernatural, necessary, and authoritative; we read in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that the Bible, “is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”
The Old Testament
The first five books of the Bible were written by Moses. During a dark time in Israel’s history when the nation was divided into a two separate kingdoms, those books were practically forgotten and lost. After the reign of a very godly king (Hezekiah), Manasseh (Hezekiah’s son) came to power and ushered in a very dark and satanic era in Judah’s history. Manasseh was fanatical about worshiping just about anything except for the only true God. One of the forms of worship that Manasseh endorsed as King was the worship of Molech. Manasseh even sacrificed one of his own children to Molech’s alter of flames.
About 60 years later, Manasseh’s grandson, Josiah, was made king at the age of eight. Josiah had a heart for the true God and one day as he was leading efforts to restore the Temple of God, under the ashes and debris was found the book of Deuteronomy written around 621 B.C.E. Josiah made the contents of Deuteronomy the laws of the land, and it was at this point that God began to use men like Josiah to shape the Bible we hold in our hands today.
The Old Testament can be divided up into three main parts: The Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Pentateuch (the first five books of our Bible) was pretty much recognized scripture hundreds of years before Josiah was born. But more than 700 years would pass before the Old Testament we have today would be officially canonized. During those 700 years the section know as the Prophets would be compiled – men who spoke on behalf of God against Israel’s worship of other gods. Roughly around 200 A.C.E. the section of the Prophets would be recognized as being scripture belonging with the Pentateuch. And although they were considered vitally important to the religious life of the Jews, the Writings (the poetic and narrative books of the OT) would not be officially recognized as scripture until about 90 years after the birth of Jesus Christ.
During these formative years, there were many other books written by other Godly men, but by and large the books we have in our Bible’s today are the ones that were generally accepted by the religious leaders representing the many, many years it took to form the Old Testament.
Somewhere between 150-200 A.C.E the Old Testament was officially canonized as official scripture. But for thousands of years these Old Testament books were recognized as having God’s stamp of authenticity on them, and what you need to understand is that a group of individuals did not come together to chose which books were scripture and which books were not, but simply came together to recognize which books had God’s stamp of authenticity on them.
Over the years, each book in the Old Testament was carefully copied. Every time there was an error a new scroll was begun and every time Yahweh’s name was spelled a new jar of ink and a new brush was used. A comparison with our Old Testament with the oldest copies of the Old Testament prove virtually impeccable work. Might I also add that the Bible has become a standard archeological tool for unearthing history.
By the time Jesus was born the Jewish community recognized the Old Testament books we have today as being scripture. But how about the New Testament, can we really trust what we learn about Jesus from the New Testament?
The New Testament
Shortly after the death of Jesus Christ what we find is that the first century church was made up of fishermen, ex-prostitutes, doctors, businesspeople, lawyers, and tax-collectors. Eighteen of the twenty-seven books that make up the New Testament were written years before the earliest Gospel accounts were written. And yes, there were many other books and gospels written within the first 100 years of the early church. One of those gospels was just translated which made the front page of just about every major news paper and magazine around nation: you know it as the Gospel of Judas.
So what makes the gospels and epistles we have in our Bible, Scripture, and the others, which were excluded from our Bibles, non-scripture? Well, let’s begin with the Gospels we have versus the other Gospels that were excluded (Gnostic gospels). The first reason they were included is that they are the earliest accounts of the life of Christ that we have and they were the first portions of our New Testament that the early church had included in their worship services dating back to 150 A.C.E. And, by 200 A.C.E. the four Gospels as well as 10 of the 13 letters of the Apostle Paul were considered authoritative Christian writings for the Church at large.
What is so amazing to me is that we have over 86,000 quotations from the early church fathers dating between 100-200 A.C.E. from our New Testament. The early church Father Origen (185-254 A.C.E.) once wrote, “Nevertheless, among all these we have approved solely what the church has recognized which is that only the four gospels should be accepted.” Before Origen died in 254 A.C.E., he had accepted all of what we have in our Bibles as Scripture.
In-fact, virtually the entire New Testament was recognized as scripture with the exception of Revelation and the book of Hebrews by 150 A.C.E. The Apostle Peter include the writings of Paul as Scripture even long before that when he wrote his second epistle; listen to what he says about the letters of Paul,
“And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures”. (2 Peter 3:16)
Before there was ever a New Testament book, the books that make up our New Testament were written in the form of scrolls which were carefully copied and circulated among the churches around the known world. We have documentation of some of the things the early church Fathers had written; one such letter was penned by a very important figure in early church history, Anthanasius who sent out an Easter letter to the churches under his care listing all 27 books of our New Testament as being Holy Scripture.
By 380-382 another very important figure of church history completed the Bible translated in Latin which included every book we have in our Bible making it the first official canonized Bible in history.
So, was the Bible collated by a pagan empire as Dan Brown suggests? Absolutely not! The Bible was collated as men recognized which books had God’s stamp on it over the many years it took to collect one complete Bible. What is important to keep in mind is that just because the Bible was not officially canonized by the Church until the late fourth century does not mean that the Bible we have today did not become authoritative until the fourth century. Every single book we have was scripture long before the church recognized it as such. So for Dan Brown to suggest that the Bible was compiled by a pagan government is foolish!
Were there over 80 Gospels? We are not entirely certain, but there were a good handful. Why were they not included with the four we have in our Bibles today? They were shown to be fraudulent in their accounts as the four we have in our Bibles proved to be valid.
Matthew and John were authored by eye witnesses. The Gospel of Luke was authored by a historian who was discipled by the apostle Paul and the Gospel of Mark was written by a man discipled by the apostle Peter. All four Gospels came from credible authors.
Application
I have shown you why it is foolish to charge the bible as being collated by a pagan government, so permit me to briefly share with you two historically true stories for the purpose of illustrating to you that the Bible we have today is indeed trustworthy
Polycarp was a disciple of the apostle John. During a severe time of persecution for the Church, Polycarp was urged by the chief of police to renounce his beliefs as a Christian. After being urged several times to renounce Christ or face death, Polycarp had this to say, “How could I blaspheme my King and Savior? I am a Christian. If you are willing to learn what Christianity is, set a time at which you can hear me.” When the official refused Polycarp’s offer with one last warning, Polycarp signed his death certificate with these words: “You threaten me with fire that burns but for an hour and goes out after a short time, for you do not know the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment for the godless. Why do you wait? Bring on what you will.”
When Polycarp was brought into the arena to be burned alive, the masses of spectators cried out, “He is the teacher of Asia! The father of the Christians! The destroyer of our gods!” I ask you if the Bible was a collation of a bunch of books, would you do what Polycarp did?
Another church father by the name of Athenagoras (177 A.C.E.) who was no doubt influenced by the four Gospels and Pauline epistles wrote, “Whenever the Christians proclaim that there is only one God and He is only known in Christ, a law is put in force against us.” And some of the most horrific laws were put into effect against Christians, and for about 200 years Christians were persecuted mercilessly.
But in 313 A.C.E with the conversion of Emperor Constantine, persecution of the Church turned to toleration and Christians were allowed to worship Christ publicly.
The second part of the quotation I read at the beginning of this sermon stated that the Bible was collated by Constantine. That statement is just plain old ludicrous. The fact is that the Bible that we have today was accepted as Scripture. Constantine was first a politician and maybe a Christian. Shortly after his “conversion” a very divisive theological debate ensued regarding whether or not Jesus was simply created by God or that He was God. The group that argued Jesus was not God created what was known as Ariunism (named after a deacon who popularized this view named Arius).
Things got so bad that Constantine called for 318 Bishops to a meeting in Nicaea to work out the controversy and formulate an orthodox position on the issue. What Dan Brown failed to mention was the things did not go the way Constantine had hoped for as he was sympathetic to Arianism. Out of 318 church leaders only two voted for the Arian view of Christ. The rest of them voted that Jesus was God incarnate; where do you think they got this idea from? The Bible. At that meeting in 325 A.C.E, 316 of the 318 bishops drafted a statement which answers what the position of the Church was on the deity of Jesus Christ and this is what they wrote:
We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
Begotten of the Father as only begotten, that is, out of the being of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father, through whom all things are made, things in heaven and things on earth, who, for us humans and for our salvation came down and became flesh, becoming human, he suffered, and he rose on the third day, and having gone into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead.
And in the Holy Spirit.
Those who say, “There was a time when he was not” and “before he was begotten he was not” and that he was made from what was not, or that he was of another being or substance or a creature… let the universal church consider them anathema.
During the time of the drafting of the Nicaen Creed there was a man who stood tall for the teaching from the Scripture concerning Jesus Christ, his name was Athanasius. Athanasius was one of the Bishops who helped craft the Nicaen Creed. Do you want to know what kind of friend Constantine was to the orthodox view of Christ as God incarnate? Constantine had Athanasious exiled two times and the sons who succeeded Constantine exiled Athanasious three times due to his view of the deity of Christ.
Friends, if Constantine had his way with the Bible we hold in our hands, we would see an entirely different Christ. The fact is the Bible we hold in our hands is what it is and has stood the test of time because it is the Word of God and God fearing men and women have recognized it as such through the course of history.
As a body of believers, let’s stand and read the Creed that was revised in 381 which says virtually the same thing the Nicaen Creed says; but just reads better.
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381 AD)
We believe in one God, the Father all mighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, of the same substance as the Father, through whom all things were made;
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary, and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and rose on the third day, according to the scriptures, and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets; and in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. We confess on baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
