Trinity Baptist Church

ReConnect

Connecting People with Truth

John 17:17

 

Today we are continuing our series called “ReConnect” that is focused on helping us understand why the Sunday School is so critical to getting the job done as a church.

 

Last week I shared with you that the Sunday School is the church’s primary strategy for connecting people to Jesus, His Truth, His community and His mission.

 

When Jesus ascended and left the world in the hands of the church, He said we were to go into that world and make disciples.  We looked at that responsibility last week.  Only the church has the gospel and only the church has been instructed to bear the responsibility of developing followers of Jesus Christ.

 

Therefore, everything we do is to have the flavor of evangelism.  Obviously, we do a lot of other things.  But it ought always be our objective to win souls to Christ and see them become active, faithful disciples of the Lord.

 

God forgive us for the times we make church and what we do so inwardly turned and self-serving that we neglect the responsibility of connecting people to Jesus.

 

Now, in the Great Commission, Jesus also said we were to “teach the people we win to observe everything He commanded.”

 

Therefore, if the church is going to be obedient, we must have a way to systematically and consistently connect people to the Truth of God’s Word.

 

The primary way we have of doing that is the Sunday School.  Now understand, it’s not the only way, but it is the primary way.  We invest more time and resources into the Bible-teaching ministry of the church than any other thing we do. It employs more people than any other ministry. In fact, it is one of the main ways we invest back into you as a member of the church with literature and ministry.

 

Now, why is it so important that disciples of the Lord be connected with His Truth?

 

Think about it this way.  When Jesus sent out the original hearers of the Great Commission, He told them to go into all the world.  Therefore, everyone who comes to Christ comes out of the world.  That means everyone has a value system or morals system that is dependent upon their background, their family, their upbringing and circumstances and what they’ve been taught.

 

For lack of a better term, we could call it a world view and all kinds of things combine to influence people’s world view or their belief system.

 

Now world views function just like prescription eyewear.  If you've got the correct prescription for your contact lenses or for glasses, then you can see the world clearly and correctly.  But if your prescription is off, everything is fuzzy and out of focus.

 

 

So it is of the utmost importance that we believe correctly or every decision, every relationship, every circumstance of our life will be affected by how we view it.

 

Now, even though everybody has a world view that determines the way they look at the world, their place in the world and what they think in the world is really important, there are really only two basic world views.  There is the Christian world view and there is the non-Christian world view.

 

These world views are radically different at practically every point of debate.  Whether it is answering the questions of why is there something rather than nothing?  How do you explain human nature?  How do you determine what is right and wrong?  How do you know that you know?  What happens to a person at death? The Christian worldview gives answers radically different from every other non-christian world view.

 

Now, the Christian world view is based on what we believe, not only to be truth, but the ultimate truth.  Where do we get the idea that God created us, that because of the fall of man, sin entered into this world and ruined it and that Jesus Christ came to die and was raised from the dead to make this world right again?  We get it from the Bible.

 

Many of us as children can remember the song that goes like this -

        "Jesus loves me, this I know

        For the Bible tells me so."

 

 

 

That raises "the" big question - Why believe the Bible?  It is one thing to say the Bible is true, but how do you know it is true?  How do we know we can trust the Bible enough to connect our lives and the lives of others to it and know they will be instructed and led correctly?

 

After all, most of the world casts doubts on the Bible and judges it to be an old and out-of-date book with no relevance to a modern world. Many other will give it a casual nod as merely a good book that takes its place alongside other notable works of literature.                                          

But we claim it to be the book that God Himself wrote. In fact, we believe it to be without error or contradiction, inspired and authoritative, the very Word of God.  We accept those declarations that it makes of Itself when we read, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right." (II Timothy 3:16, NLT)

 

But the main reason we accept it as God’s Word and teach it and seek to connect people with it is because of what Jesus Himself said about it.

 

John 17:17

 

Jesus believed the Bible was totally, completely, absolutely true and was indeed the Word of God.  If that is true, then there should be compelling reasons why we ought to believe the Bible and beyond that take seriously our responsibility to connect people with it.

 

 

Let me share three with you today.  First of all, we connect people with the Bible because it is

 

 

Let me ask you a question.  What would happen if you chose 10 different people from the same city, with the same culture, with the same educational level, speaking the same language, apart from each other, never talking to each other, never consulting with each other, to write a book about one controversial topic such as - the meaning of life.   What are the chances they would be absolutely totally in agreement?  You and I both know the chance of that happening would be absolutely zero.

 

Then imagine this.  Here is a book that is actually 66 books in one, written over a period of 1500 years, by 40 different authors, living in 3 different continents (Europe, Africa and Asia), writing in 3 different languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic), writing on many controversial topics and yet they all wrote on one theme and they all said exactly the same thing.

 

Think about this.  The first book of the Bible begins in a garden in paradise.  In that garden is a tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  When you go to the last book of the Bible, Revelation written 1500 years later, you end up again in the paradise of God where there is also another tree - the tree of healing for the nations.  In Genesis, man is driven out of the garden, because of his sin and forbidden to eat of the tree.  In Revelation, he is invited to come in and partake of the tree that he might live forever.

 

 

In Genesis, there is a river which flows from the garden.  In Revelation, there is a river that flows from the throne of God.  And as W.A. Criswell used to preach, there is a scarlet thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation called the redemption of sinful man, by the grace of God through faith in a Redeemer, named Jesus Christ.

 

So far, so good, but how do we know that all that the Bible says actually happened? How do we know it is fact not fable?  How do we really know there was a Moses and a Rea Sea?  How do we really know there was a Goliath that David killed?  How do we really know there was a Daniel in the lion's den?

 

How about Jonah and the whale?  I heard about a little girl who was ridiculed by her school teacher for believing Jonah was really swallowed by a great fish.  The little girl said, “Well when I get to heaven, I’ll just ask him if it happened!”  The teacher said, “What if he’s not there?”  The little girl said, “Then you can ask him!”

 

How do we really know that all of that stuff happened?  How can we be sure there was a Jesus, who died on a cross and came out of a tomb three days later?

 

The truth is, nobody can prove or disprove what has taken place in the ancient past.  All I can do is present the evidence. I can't prove there actually was a man named George Washington, who was the first President of the United States.  All I can do is present the evidence.  And when you consider the evidence, you need to keep two things in mind.

 

 

First, the trustworthiness of any historical account is based on the evidence for that account.  The evidence must come from ancient documents and manuscripts.  All ancient history is based on documentary evidence.  Remember, 1000, 2000, 3000 years ago there were no videos, televisions, cameras or tape-recorders.  There wasn't any FOX news or CNN!

 

And honestly, we are at a disadvantage because we don't have any of the original accounts.  We don't have any of the original manuscripts that were first written when all these things took place.  So the question is - how do we know we have the right stuff?

 

We use the same principles we use in any other area of learning.  In high school history and literature books we read about Julius Caesar and Plato and Homer and no one questions any of those historical figures.

 

Have you ever thought about how many copies or manuscripts we have of these historical figures and how close they are to one another?  Have you ever thought about what the time span is between the copies that we do have and the original copies that must have been written?

 

Let me just give you the manuscript evidence for the ancient writings related to these 3 historical figures I just gave you.

 

- Julius Caesar - earliest manuscripts 1000 years after Caesar lived - only 10 manuscripts exist.

- Plato - earliest manuscripts 1300 years after Plato lived - only 7 manuscripts.

- Homer - earliest manuscripts 500 years after Homer lived - 643 manuscripts.

 

In fact, Homer's Iliad is the most well-supported overwhelmingly confirmed ancient text in the world next to the Bible.  It has 643 manuscripts, the oldest of which comes 500 years after he actually wrote it.

 

But consider this: in the New Testament alone there are over 5,300 Greek manuscripts, the earliest just

35 years after the Book of Revelation was written.

 

Have you ever heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Fragments of almost every book in the Old Testament were found in these scrolls and they were dated approximately 150 B.C. which is only 200 years after the last event of the Old Testament took place.  There is no other book in the world that has as much manuscript support or is as closely tied to the original event than the Bible.

 

Putting together all of these manuscripts and comparing them with the version of the Bible we have today, we now know that we have at least 99.5% of what would be considered the original document.  No other historical source or book in the history of the world can make that claim, and yet no one questions the historicity of Julius Caesar and the others.

 

But that still raises the question - How do we know they got their history right?

 

If I read a history book and it says that Custer's Last Stand took place at the Sonic while he was eating a chili dog in 1998, I would be disinclined to believe that history book.

So we don’t depend merely upon the documents.  We add to that the study of archeology to help verify the accuracy of the document.

 

I could give you hundreds of examples of the historical accuracy of the Bible.  I will just give you one.  Everybody knows the story about Jericho and how the walls "came tumbling down".  For many years critics laughed at this story.  They said, first of all, you just don't walk around a city and have the walls fall down flat.  Second, they said there is no way the Israelites could have marched around that city seven times in one day, because the city would have been too big and there was not enough time.

 

But when Professor John Garstang, a British Archeologist, discovered the site of ancient Jericho, he discovered two things.  First of all, the city wasn’t nearly as large as was originally thought.  Therefore the 7 times in one day march was completely possible.

 

But secondly he discovered the walls of the city had indeed fallen so completely that the attackers were able to climb up and over the ruins into the city. And there was one unusual archaeological discovery that was unearthed and that was that the walls fell outward.  Typically, when walls are attacked they fall inward, but for the only time the archeologist ever found, in this case, the walls fell outward.

 

Question:  Why would the residents of Jericho knock down their won walls?  The answer is they didn’t.  God knocked down the walls and archaeologist, centuries later, just came along to verify what the Bible had already recorded.

 

There are hundreds of examples of archaeology verifying Scripture, but let me just quote a man by the name of Dr. Nelson Glueck who is considered to be the greatest modern authority on Israeli archeology.  He said, "No archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference...archeology continues to confirm a clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible."

                         

That’s what Jesus meant when He said "Your word is truth." And with confidence we can connect people to the Bible because it is historically reliable. Secondly, we connect people to the Bible because it is

 

 

No other book on this planet can match the staggering accuracy of foretelling future events like the Bible.  Thirty percent of the Bible consists of prophecy and not one of its prophecies has ever been shown to be false.

 

In fact, the prophecies of scripture are so specific and so detailed; they have to be exactly fulfilled.  Not only do many of these prophecies speak of things of which there was no likelihood that they would ever come to pass, many times they predicted the very opposite of what a human being would normally expect.  In hundreds of instances, the fulfillment of the prophecy did not take place until after the prophet had already died.

 

In the Old Testament alone, there are over 2000 prophecies that have already come to pass.  Nothing vaguely resembles this in any other book in the world.

 

Twenty-six volumes of books claim to be divine scriptures just like the Bible, but not one of those 26 volumes has any specific predictive prophecies.  Jesus Christ alone fulfilled over 300 prophecies with His life, His death, His burial and His resurrection.

 

The Bible even gives detailed predictions concerning entire countries.  Let me give you one fascinating example that I just came across.

 

At one time, Egypt was the greatest nation in the entire world.  It was the king of nations.  It was the richest country on earth.  In one prophecy about Egypt, the Prophet Ezekiel said this, "There will no longer be a prince from the land of Egypt."  (Ezekiel 30:13b, HCSV)

 

Until a few decades ago, before Egypt went through a more so called democratic form of government, Egypt was always ruled by a prince.  But guess what?  During the nearly 2500 years between this prophecy and Egypt's change to their present form of government, none of their princes were ever Egyptian.

 

That would be like prophesying today that an American will never again be President of the United States and then having 2500 years go by with no American president.  How could anybody ever have predicted something like that could happen? Only God, who knows the truth before it even happened.

 

No wonder Jesus said, "Your word is truth." And we can connect people with the Bible because it is prophetically right.  Third, we connect people to the Bible because it is

 

 

Now here is where our ministry becomes extremely vital.  And if we miss this, we’ve missed the point of why we are entrusted with teaching the Bible.

 

There are a lot of things that are true in the world that have very little significance. For instance, I can tell you I ate pancakes for breakfast this morning, and if I did in fact, that would be a true statement.  It just doesn’t really matter.

 

So there are a lot of things that are true; they just don’t make any difference. In fact, most of the social media of the world today add ample evidence to that fact.  If you want a plethora of non-essential information, just read someone’s Twitter posts.

 

In fact, I heard a comedian recently say that one of these days, long after our planet has been destroyed, intelligent life from other planets will make their way to the hollowed out shell of what used to be earth and there they will discover our personal communication devices.  They will hold them up to their head and scan the contents of our SIM cards and hard drives and when they gaze upon our FaceBook and Twitter accounts and read our Tweets they will say, “It’s amazing!  Everyone on this planet thought they were important!”

 

Listen:  I don’t have to know every time you blow your nose or go to the bathroom, even if it is true!

I can tell you the truth about how many buttons I have on this shirt that I am wearing right now, but who gives a rip?  But when we open our Bibles in Sunday School class, everything changes.

 

There is a significance to what is contained there and it is personally relevant to every person who comes in contact with it.  God forgive us for the time we steal away from it talking about football and politics and how bad we feel and Aunt Sally’s garden and all the other stuff when we have gathered together to open the Bible and talk about the Truth. ‘  Jesus said, “Your Word is Truth.”  But notice what He said just before that.

 

verses 16-17

 

There's a beautiful identification in that. I'm holy and separate and set apart, and so are they.  That is one of the most beautiful things Jesus ever said on our behalf, "Sanctify them in the truth, Your Word so they can be like Me”.  The word “sanctify” means to make holy or separate from sin.  That is the power of the Word of God.  I love this statement, "Your Word is truth." It doesn't say, "Thy Word contains truth," it says, "Thy Word IS truth."

 

And we have the privilege every Sunday morning of picking up the precious Word of Truth, the Word of God and helping people to be remade and transformed into the very image of Jesus Christ Himself.

 

Teachers, I challenge you to have that in mind when you gather with your Sunday School class. Students, I challenge you to remember when you come on Sunday morning it’s to do more than just see friends and go to church.  When we do Sunday School right and connect people to the truth of God’s Word, we are actually being a part of answering Jesus’ prayer for His followers to be set apart and made holy like He is separate and holy by the Word of God.

What a high and holy responsibility and privilege that is.  And if you doubt that this book has that kind of power, listen to what John Adams, the second President of the United States wrote in his diary.

 

"Suppose a nation in some distance region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! ... What a utopia, what a paradise would this region be."

 

It may never happen in every country in the world.  It may not even happen in every home in Ardmore.  But it can happen in your life.  In fact, that is God’s desire for your life.  Sanctification is a process that continues until we see Jesus, and the first step in the process is salvation.

 

Everyone begins there.  Several years ago I had the opportunity to meet a man named Anthony Lemons.  He lived down in Florida and through a course of events, he had met a lady here in our church, fallen in love and they wanted to get married.

 

I told her, even though she was in her 70’s, I didn’t marry anybody without doing some counseling, and in this case, at least getting to meet the guy.  So we made an appointment and they came to see me.

During the course of that conversation I asked Anthony to tell me about his relationship with the Lord.  He told me about being raised as an Italian Catholic.  When he and his first wife met, she was a nominal Methodist, and they didn’t go to church at all.

 

But his wife, Lylla, was friends with Elisabeth Elliot.  Elisabeth was the wife of Jim Elliot.

Together they served as missionaries to the Auca Indians of Ecuador.  Jim was murdered by those Indians in 1956.  Elisabeth and her ten-month old daughter, Valerie stayed for another two years ministering to the tribe that killed their husband and father.

 

During a visit to the home of Lylla and Anthony, Elisabeth led Lylla to the Lord.  Anthony told me it so radically changed her life that it caused problems in their marriage and home – to the point he threatened to divorce her.

 

Her response was, “My Lord is bigger than any lawyer you could hire!”  He said, “When I realized how serious she was about her faith, I went upstairs to my old keepsakes and found an old Catholic Bible.”  He told me He knew nothing about it; had never read it, in fact, as a child had been discouraged from reading it.

 

He said, I wondered, where do I begin?  He looked to the table of contents and saw “The Book of Romans”, and thought, “Hey, I’m a Roman.  I’ll start there.”  He said, “As you know, you don’t have to read very far before you find out that all have sinned and need a Savior and that Jesus died for those sins.”

 

And without anyone assisting him, there in the quietness of his attic, with a Bible in his lap, Anthony Lemons gave his heart to the Lord.  That was in the early 1960’s and he’s still serving the Lord today in Clearwater, Florida.   And I want you to know this old book is personally applicable to you. If you’ll just give it a chance, it will change your life.

 

 

You see, it is not only the primary tool the church has for connecting people to Truth, it’s God’s primary tool for connecting people to Himself.

 

I love the words of the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, who said this, "I am a creature of a day.  I am a spirit come from God and returning to God.  I want to know one thing: the way to heaven.  God Himself has condescended to teach me the way.  He has written it down in a book. Give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God.  Let me be a man of one book - this book, the Bible."

 

Everybody on this planet, including you, has to make a decision about the Bible.  Since you have all these religious books out there and they all say different things about God, heaven, hell, creation, and Jesus Christ, there are only two possibilities. 

 

Possibility #1 is they are all wrong.  There is no God and nothing else matters.  We are born, we live and we die and that is it.

 

Possibility #2 is one of them is right.  They can’t all be right.  There is too much divergence between them.  Now the Bible could take its place among all the others and be wrong.  It might be just a bunch of myths and fairytales. Some other religious book may be the real truth and not the Bible.  But based on the evidence, I don't know how you could believe that.  As for me, I am going to go with the Man that came back from the dead, who said, "Your Word is truth".  I am going with the Bible.  And I’m going to do all I can to help others get connected to Truth.

 

Let’s pray.