Reasons to Believe the Bible: Prophetic Testimonies of Faith

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Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, September 26. What’s the most valuable thing you can own? Was your answer the Bible? Today, Dr. Stanley’s message reminds us that we should cherish God’s Word above all else.

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If someone should ask you, when you die, are you going to heaven? More than likely, if you are a believer, you would certainly say, yes, I am. If you’re not sure, you’d probably say, well, I hope so, or I think so, I’m not certain. But if you were to say, yes, I am, more than likely the next question would be something like this, well, how do you know you are? and more than likely you’d say, well, I just know I am. And if they kept pressing you, you’d probably say, well, because the Bible says so. And they may ask, well, what does it say? And you would say something like this. The Bible says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, that is in faith, believing, would be saved. And that’s what I’ve done, and because that’s what the Bible says, that’s what I’ve done, I know I’m saved. So somebody says, well, you mean to tell me then that you know you’re saved because of what the Bible says. Right. Well, how do you know the Bible’s true? Then what would you say? Well, that’s what I want to talk about in this message. I want you to be able to say, this is the reason I believe the Bible is true, because it certainly is the living Word of the living God. And there are many, many reasons for believing that the Bible is indeed the infallible, inerrant Word of the living God. And I want you to turn, if you will, to 1 Peter. And what I would like to do is to give you some of those reasons. And I want you to turn, if you will, to 1 Peter chapter 1, beginning in verse 22. Listen to what he says. He says, Since you have, in obedience to the truth, purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart. For you have been born again, not of seed, which is perishable, but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God, which means it was through the word of God that you and I came to know the truth of who Jesus Christ is, and thereby, that’s how we were saved. Then he quotes from Isaiah. He says, “‘For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of grass. The grass withers, and the flowers fall off, but the word of the Lord abides forever.'” And this is the word which was preached to you. Well, what are those reasons? One of the reasons I’d like to give today is the fact, the testimony of Jesus Christ himself. And so I want you to turn to two or three passages here. And what I’d like for us to do is to see the way Jesus spoke of the Old Testament, which is what he had in his day, how he spoke of that. And then likewise, how we relate that to Him. So go back, if you will, to Mark chapter 7 for a moment. Thinking about this now, if Jesus affirmed the Scriptures, surely either Jesus Christ was mistaken, either Jesus Christ was not all He claimed to be, or He was giving us a reason to believe that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is the living Word of God. He says in Mark chapter 7, speaking with the Pharisees who were always on his case about something. He said to them, verse 6, And he said to them, Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men, listen to this, neglecting the commandments of God. holding the traditions of men. Then he says again in verse 9, he says, you nicely set aside the commandments of God. Then verse 10, for Moses said, honor your father and your mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death. Then moving on to verse 13, he says, But he says, verse 12, you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother, thus invalidating the word of God. Now, what I want you to see is this, that Jesus looked upon the prophecy of Isaiah as the living word of God. And when he says here concerning this prophecy, he says, you invalidated the word of God. You set aside the commandments, which says that Jesus believed that the prophecy of Isaiah was the living word of God. And so when you come to look at Jesus’ attitude toward it, you have to ask yourself the question, well, if he believed it, certainly, either he was certainly truthful or untruthful, either he was telling the truth or he was not, either he was in ignorance affirming something that was not true, or what Jesus was saying was this, The Old Testament that you have is indeed the living, truthful Word of God because He said He went through all the Scriptures showing them how He was to live and He was to die. So in all these passages, what Jesus is saying is this. He is affirming the truthfulness of the Word of God in the Old Testament, and he is assuring them that the Spirit of God will guide them when he is gone, and they begin to write those things that the Spirit of God will guide them to write, remembering that the whole idea of inspiration is that the Holy Spirit of God used men who were chosen by God to write the message of God and guided them so that they wrote exactly what God told them to write. We have an inerrant, infallible, living Word of God. And so one of the reasons for believing the Bible is the Word of God is the fact that Jesus certainly gave testimony to the fact that it was true. A second reason for believing the Bible is the Word of God is fulfilled prophecy. Go back, if you will, to Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14. Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14 is, of course, the prophecy of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus. And you’ll notice in this chapter, you might want to just make a mark by this verse here. In verse 14, chapter 7. He says, verse 14, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Emmanuel, which is exactly what happened. Then if you move on over from Isaiah to the Mount of Prophets to a little book called Micah. If you go back from Malachi and go back a few books to a little book called Micah, you will find here Isaiah. a prophecy of the place of Jesus’ birth. In the fifth chapter of Micah, verse 2 says, “‘For as for you, Bethlehem, Ephratah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.'” The only person who could have lived an eternity past would be the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, of course, you and I know that the fulfillment of that in Luke and Matthew is the fact that Jesus Christ was indeed born in Bethlehem. So here are two simple prophecies of Bethlehem. of Jesus concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and His life. And then, of course, when you think in terms of other prophecies of His life, you can think about the fact that He was the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world. Go back to Isaiah chapter 53 for a moment, and you’ll notice this 53rd chapter. Here is a prophecy that the Messiah would be A suffering Messiah. Verse 4 of chapter 53. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, listen to this, smitten of God and afflicted. Who crucified Jesus? Who crucified Jesus was not Romans, though they were the physical tools, but it was God who sent Him to the cross. But he was pierced through, listen, for our transgressions, crucified. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening of our well-being fell upon him. And by his scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. Here is an Old Testament picture, a prophecy, that Jesus Christ would come as a suffering Messiah. Well, let’s go from Jesus to a particular other event. I want you to turn, if you will, to Jeremiah chapter 25. Jeremiah chapter 25, and here is the prophecy. of Jeremiah concerning what would happen to the nation of Israel because of their sin and their idolatry and their refusal to do what God had commanded them to do, and that is to let their land lay every seventh year so it could be renewed. And so they violated that year after year after year. They went after other gods, got into idolatry, and here’s what you find in the third verse of Jeremiah chapter 25. From the 13th year of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, even to this day, these 23 years, the word of the Lord has come to me, Jeremiah saying, and I have spoken to you again and again, but you’ve not listened. And the Lord has sent to you all his servants, the prophets again and again, but you have not listened, nor inclined your ear to hear. In verse 6, he says, you’ve gone after other gods to serve them, and it provoked the Lord God. Verse 7 says, you have not listened. And verse 8 says, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, because you’ve not obeyed my words, behold, I will send, take all the families of the north, declares the Lord, I will send to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a heathen king, my servant, that is God’s using him to accomplish his purpose. Moreover, Now, That happened about 605. Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonians came in, destroyed Jerusalem and took many of the young people back to Babylon. Of course, one of those was Daniel. We know the story of Daniel. Daniel has counted up now and realized that that 70-year period has come to pass and therefore he is searching the scriptures and looking to see what’s going on here because here’s what happened. That was in 538. And so in 70 years, they are allowed to go back to their homeland. Jeremiah made that prophecy 70 years before, and it came to pass exactly like God said. For example, you could look at the latter chapters of Daniel. and he’ll talk about 66 weeks and two weeks and so forth, and what is he doing? God has given him the prophecy of the time, the period of the birth of the Lord Jesus. And therefore, when you come to the Bible and you ask yourself the question, well, why should I believe it? Let me ask you a question. How in the world would you ever, ever explain prophecy after prophecy after prophecy, given most of the time years and years before it would take place, and it would take place exactly as God prophesied. Why? Because this book was written by God, not by man. It is the evidence of God all the way through this book, from Genesis to the Revelation, no inconsistencies whatsoever. And so, as you begin to look at these prophecies and ask yourself the question, well, how could God work all of these things in such a fashion? Well, you remember we said that there are two kinds of prophecies. One of them is a prophecy that determined a word concerning a person, a nation, or the Jews, or whatever, and then types. And now one of the most familiar types would be this. In the Old Testament, the sacrificial altar and the altar of the sacrifice of the lamb that would take away the sin of the world. You and I know him as the Lord Jesus Christ. But that lamb that was sacrificed in the Old Testament was a type. That is, it was a picture of it. It was a substitute for the ultimate lamb of God who would come, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we know that type. And so in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, that Lamb, was a type of Christ who was coming. So a second reason for believing the Bible is the Word of God, and you can stake your life on it, is fulfill prophecies. There is a third reason. This time I want to go back and repeat something that I said before in the last sermon, because one of the reasons for believing the Bible is the Word of God certainly is the fact of the unity of the Scripture. And you recall that we mentioned that though the Bible looks like it is 66 books, the truth is… that it is one ultimate story. It is one book. But it’s 66 books written by those men controlled by the Holy Spirit who controlled their writing. They wrote the message of God as they were led to do so. Some 40 men who wrote over a period of about 1,500 and some years on three continents, Asia, Europe, and Africa. And there is not a single contradiction in the Word of God and no inconsistencies in it. How in the world do you describe that? How can you explain that, that this book… in all these years by all these different people who were written, except that God led them to do it and guided them, could be one book. Now, what I want you to see is this, and I want to give you an example of something that I think will help you. What I’d like to do is to give you an outline in just a brief moment that will help you. Now listen carefully. Every single time you pick up this Bible, if you’ll remember what I’m about to tell you, you’ll know exactly what God’s up to. It doesn’t make a difference if you’re in Exodus or if you’re in the Revelation, if you’re in Romans or if you are in Psalms. When you pick up the Bible, you will know exactly what God is up to. Now listen carefully. Most people read the Bible this way. They’ll read a chapter or verse or two here, and then they’ll go over here and read a passage, or maybe they’ll read through a book of the Bible. And so what happens is they live their whole life reading the Word of God and not ever getting the big picture. There’s a big picture here. Until you get the big picture, you never quite understand what God’s up to. This isn’t just 66 disconnecting books. These 66 books, written over a period of 1500 years, listen, by 40 different men from some many, many different vocations, is one single story. We said the Bible is the record. It is the record, listen, of the revelation of God of Himself working in men, among men, and among nations, and among people. So, what is this book? This book is the story of God’s redeeming love for mankind. That is, this is what God intended. He intended to redeem man. And so, if you’ll think about it this way, the Bible is the story of God’s redemption of mankind. The story of God’s redeeming love. And probably that’s the best way for you to say it. It is the story of God’s redeeming love. What is redemption? Redemption is the purchase of someone. in order to do what? To liberate them and free them. This is the story of how God freed and liberated man to become the men and the women God wants us to be. So what I want to do is give you a brief outline and help you understand. And listen, anytime you pick up the Bible, you will know what God is up to by this outline. So listen carefully. Genesis 1 and 2, redemption planned because when God planned the creation of the world, he likewise planned to redeem mankind because he knew that man would fall. Genesis chapter 3 through chapters 11. Redemption needed. What happened? Man fell in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. Then comes the fact that man became so wicked and vile, God sent a flood to destroy him. And then even after that, what does he do? He builds a tower of Babel, and God has to separate him. Then comes redemption prepared for. So beginning in chapter 12, with a lot of verses of chapter 11, say chapter 12, all the way through the rest of the Old Testament, you have redemption prepared for. What’s happening? Well, God reaches down and speaks to a man by the name of Abraham. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons. One of those sons was Judah. And out of the tribe of Judah came the Messiah. So that all those years in the Old Testament, what is God doing? He is giving birth to a nation out of a family, family of Jacob, out of this family from Abraham. He raises up a nation. The responsibility of this nation is to propagate, to proclaim the truth that there is one true God. His name is Jehovah. He’s the Jehovah God of Israel. primarily, his ultimate purpose is through that family, through that nation, to send the world the Messiah. The Messiah promised in the Garden of Eden when he said, Satan will bruise his heel, but he will bruise the head of Satan, speaking of the ultimate destruction of Satan. When we come to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have, listen, redemption effected that is accomplished achieved because in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ his death and resurrection we have God’s redemptive plan now finalized we have the redemptive plan of God now what happens the book of Acts is the history it is a history book of how when God’s redemptive plan at the cross was shared what happens They went across all the world sharing the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then God raised up men like the Apostle Paul and Peter and others to do what? To explain the meaning of the truth. And so the epistles from Romans all the way through Jude is redemption explained. Then when you come to the revelation, you have redemption realized. That is the ultimate and final thing that God would do among men. What does he do here? It’s all realized and finalized in the revelation when he explains to us at the very end concerning heaven and hell. So now, if you pick up the Bible… Anywhere in the epistles, what’s happening? We have an explanation. God is explaining to us the truth of the life of Christ and what it means to live the Christian life and how. You go back, for example, anywhere in the Old Testament until you get to Genesis chapter 11. And what’s happening? God’s preparing. He’s preparing his whole redemptive plan. So that if you take that simple outline, remember what we said. We said, first of all, there is redemption plan. Redemption needed, redemption prepared for, redemption effected, redemption shared, redemption explained, redemption finalized or consummated in the revelation. Any way you pick up the Bible. So therefore, when somebody says, well, that’s just a bunch of 66 books that a bunch of guys put together. Oh, no, they didn’t. The spirit of the living God. Controlled and guided the writing because what were they doing? They didn’t eat listen Did they know what they were doing had no earthly idea what they were doing? Never did Moses ever dream of the fact that one day you and I would be holding between two leather covers here an Account of God’s great redemptive plan for mankind and so when what we have in our hands We have the story of God’s redeeming love and listen the day that you trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior You know what happened? You became a part of the kingdom of God. You became a part of God’s, listen, God’s great final plan in redeeming mankind.

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Thank you for listening to Reasons to Believe the Bible. If you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.