Text: Luke 1:1-4 | Listen to Message
Is The Bible Reliable?
Skeptics often claim that the Christian Gospels are little more than myths, legends, and fairy tales concocted by charlatans to get their new religion off the ground. But there are many lines of reasoning that argue convincingly against this claim.
Type of Literature: The Gospels are far too detailed and descriptive – including numerous specific people, places, and time indicators – to be myths. The Gospels are written as eyewitness accounts of actual events. They are written as a history of things that were actually said and done.
Source: Most religions trace their origin to a private vision or dream, a private spiritual encounter, or a private idea about God. One guy tells everybody else we’re supposed to “just believe” his private experience. And there’s no way to tell whether his claims are true or false. This is emphatically not how Christianity originated. Christianity is based on actual, public events: words that were spoken publicly, deeds that we done publicly, and miracles that were observed publicly – culminating in a very public death and an equally public resurrection.
Timing: Think about this: if you were going to make up a new religion, you would never start the way the Gospels do! You would never claim your entire faith is dependent upon very recent historic events that didn’t actually happen. Why not? Because your peers could all come forward and easily prove that you’re lying! So why didn’t anyone do this when the Gospels were first written and circulated? One explanation is that everyone knew the Gospels were true and accurate down to the smallest detail.
Content: The Gospels are way too counterproductive to be anything other than history. If you were trying to start a new religion, you wouldn’t claim that your Savior and God was murdered on a Cross – an offense to both Jews and Gentiles – unless he actually was. You certainly wouldn’t acknowledge that you yourselves were bumbling fools who were slow to believe and hard of heart! You wouldn’t add all those little details that would be easy for your contemporaries to disprove…unless all those little details were actually true!
Becoming a follower of Christ is an act of faith, but it is not a blind leap of faith into the abyss. Christianity is the only religion in the world that claims to be based on real space-time historic events that happened publicly – and, therefore, Christianity is easily the world’s most falsifiable religion. All you have to do is prove that something in there is a lie – that it never happened. And no one has ever been able to do that. No one has ever falsified a single detail.
The most plausible explanation is that the Gospels are what they claim to be: reliable, eyewitness accounts of the words and works of Jesus Christ.
Sermon Notes & Application Questions