The Christians Hour

Aaron Brockett: It's time now for the Christians Hour. Thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you with us. The Christians Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, where we use radio and media to share the good news of Jesus Christ all around the world until all have heard.

Have you ever stopped to think about how much our world is constantly changing? Seasons come and go, technology advances, trends, jobs, hobbies, and even our relationships can look very different from one year to the next. Change is all around us, and often it happens so gradually we hardly notice it.

But in the midst of a world that is always changing, is there anything that really remains the same? What about God? And what about His word? Today, Mike Breaux from Eastside Christian Church in Anaheim, California, launches us into a new series called Some Things Never Change.

In this first message, we'll explore one of the greatest constants in history: the Word of God. How is it that a book written thousands of years ago continues to transform lives today? Can the Bible really speak with relevance and authority to a rapidly changing culture? And what makes God's word different from every other book ever written? Listen in to discover why the Bible has stood the test of time and why its message is just as powerful and life-changing today as it ever was. Here's Mike to share more.

Mike Breaux: Today, I want you to know this: the Bible still speaks. I find this book to be so fresh and so relevant. It is so full of wisdom, truth, and hope. It's a light for my path. Couldn't we all use a little light for the journey in this world of darkness and uncertainty?

Every religion claims to have its own enlightened truth source or truth sources. Judaism has the Torah and the Talmud. Islam has the Quran. Hinduism has the Vedas. Mormonism has the Book of Mormon. Scientology has the works of L. Ron Hubbard. Jehovah’s Witnesses have their own edited translation of the Bible and their Watchtower literature. But Christianity claims only one book as its truth source, and that's the Bible. And the Bible claims to be the Word of God.

The mere fact that the Bible claims to be the Word of God doesn't prove that it is, because there are other books that make similar type claims. The difference is that the Bible contains indisputable evidence as being the actual Word of God. Whatever you believe about the Bible, you’ve got to admit it is a unique book.

First of all, there's amazing unity. Did you know the Bible is actually a library made up of 66 different books, written over a 1,500-year span over 40 generations and by 40 different authors from every walk of life? This includes kings, servants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, scholars, doctors, military generals, and IRS agents.

They wrote from different places, such as deserts, dungeons, palaces, islands, battlefields, hillsides, and prison cells. They wrote on three different continents and in three different languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. Yet, it maintains amazing unity. Its subject matter includes hundreds of controversial subjects, setting up the potential for vastly different opinions.

You think that's not a challenge? Just take ten authors, all from the same walk of life, from the same generation, with the same education from the same university, the same language, in one place at one time, on one continent, in one city, in the same room, and have them write just on one controversial subject. What do you think you’d get?

Do you think they would all agree with each other, meshing with each other’s thoughts, keeping the same theme, and building upon each other’s writings? Not a chance. Yet, the Bible does that with all these different authors from vastly different places and cultures, different times, different education, over 1,500 years, and maintains amazing unity, not just on one topic but on hundreds.

That's pretty amazing. The Bible also has the uniqueness of having this long-standing popularity. Since it began to run off of Gutenberg's printing press in 1450, it has maintained the top spot on the bestseller list. The Bible is the single most published book in the history of the world.

It is the single most translated book in the world, in over 1,700 languages and climbing. It is the single most smuggled book in the world, with many people risking their lives just to get their hands on one. Its uniqueness is also seen in how it has maintained incredible durability.

No other book has been as scrutinized, criticized, ridiculed, dissected, sliced, diced, banned, and burned as the Bible. Kings, emperors, dictators, and governments have tried to wipe it out, but it just keeps bouncing back. It keeps living on and keeps changing lives. You get the idea that Jesus knew what He was talking about when He said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away."

I love what Bernard Ramm one time wrote. He said, "A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the flowers ordered, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and the eulogy written. But somehow the corpse never stays put." It's extremely durable.

And not only that, like I said earlier, it continues to be so fresh. It's easy to be relevant and fresh when you're working with a book like the Bible because it gives timeless answers for raising kids, managing anger, relating on the job, building friendships, and breaking free from addictions and bad habits.

It gives fresh information on how to manage money, balance the stressful demands of life, deal with anxiety, and find fulfillment in a personal relationship with our Maker. There's never been a book this fresh, this relevant, or this unique. Maybe you're saying, "Okay, I'll give you that. The Bible's a pretty unique book for all those reasons. But what I'm wondering is, I need something true to build my life on. Can I trust it?"

Can I trust the reliability of the Bible as my truth source? Let's just walk through a series of questions to help us determine that. First of all, what's the Bible say about itself? Even though it was written by men, the ultimate author was God. This is not a claim invented by the church, but a claim that the Bible makes for itself.

Second Timothy chapter 3 says, "All Scripture is inspired by God. It's God-breathed and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what's wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right." Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends, writes this in First Peter: "All men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever."

All throughout the Bible, over 2,000 times in the Old Testament section of the Bible alone, there are clauses like, "And the Lord spoke to Moses," "The Lord spoke to Abraham," "The Lord spoke to Samuel," "The Lord spoke to Elijah," and "The word of the Lord came to Jonah."

Again, one of Jesus' closest friends, Peter, writes this: "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation, for prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." The Bible claims to be a record of the words and the deeds of God. Thus, it views itself as the Word of God.

The Word of God paints a very clear picture of what He's like. It paints a very clear picture in the New Testament of what Jesus did, what He said, how He moved, whom He touched, and the kind of people He hung out with. Since He was God in the flesh, it gives us a very clear picture of what God is really like.

You could head over to your local bookstore and find shelves of biographies. Some of them are scholarly biographies, and some are unauthorized tell-all books about a certain famous or not-so-famous person. Depending upon which sources you read, you could walk away with a very different picture of the same person.

Take Elvis, for instance. According to most sources, he died August 16, 1977, and is buried in Memphis, Tennessee. But if you consult the National Enquirer, you might read that Elvis was recently spotted alive and well at a 7-Eleven outside of La Habra. Yet everything written about Jesus, that one person, gives us the exact same picture of Him.

You might ask, "Are those sources reliable? Are there any eyewitnesses? How many witnesses actually met this person named Jesus? How many heard His teaching? How many watched Him perform miracles? How many actually saw Him after He supposedly returned from the dead? Are these accounts backed up by credible witnesses, or are they just a tabloid fabrication invented by a woman in a 7-Eleven outside of La Habra?"

It turns out that there are many eyewitnesses. Jesus' oldest biographies are the books in the New Testament of the Bible called the Gospels, which simply means the good news of God's love. They are named after their writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. From those biographies, you can find out a lot about who Jesus claimed to be, what kind of things He said, what kind of things He did, and how He related with all kinds of people.

He exactly fit 100% all the century-old prophecies about the predicted Savior that was to come into the world. The historian named Mark recorded Peter's firsthand account in his gospel. Luke was a physician and a first-century investigative reporter. He wrote this intensely accurate biography based on eyewitness testimony.

Peter ended up writing two letters of the New Testament. Matthew, John, and James were all eyewitnesses who wrote biographies or letters about Jesus. Peter, who was part of Jesus' inner circle, wrote this: "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty."

Another guy named John was one of Jesus' best friends. He was in that small group with Peter. He writes this: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. This life appeared, and we have seen it, and we testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us."

Here's John saying, "We're not making this stuff up. We have no reason to. We saw Him. We touched Him. We saw the calluses on His hands from years working as a Judean carpenter. We hugged His rugged body. We sat around campfires together, laughed together, cried together, ate together, told jokes, listened to stories, prayed together, and sang together. I'm telling you, He's the greatest person you will ever meet."

"He is the Great I Am. He always has been, always will be. He is life, and just like Him, that life that He brings is eternal life. I'm telling you all this, I'm writing it all down so that you can know that life too. I'm telling you, we saw Him do so many things, like turn water into wine, make crooked legs straight, and restore sight to the blind. He made lepers clean. He drove out demons. He walked on water."

"We watched Him in a boat calm a storm. We saw Him call a dead man out of a tomb. He's the greatest person you'll ever meet, and I'm writing it all down so that you can know Him too." And then there was a guy named Paul, who wrote a lot of the New Testament of the Bible.

He said this in First Corinthians chapter 15: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter and then to the twelve. After that, He appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, so you can ask them, though some have fallen asleep."

"Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, He appeared also to me." So there's lots of eyewitness testimony. Maybe you're thinking, "Yeah, but come on, eyewitnesses can lie." Certainly eyewitnesses can lie. But let me ask you: would they die for something that they knew was a lie they all made up?

Don't you think somewhere along the line, somebody would have broken ranks and said, "Please, don't cut my head off. Please don't dip me in boiling hot oil. Please don't crucify me upside down. We're just making this whole thing up. We've been lying the whole time." Not a chance.

And what about eyewitnesses to the eyewitnesses? That's important too, right? Let's say we went to a basketball court and you watched me as I attempted to run the length of the floor, take off from the top of the key, and dunk a basketball. All of you were there to watch this incredible feat. After it was all over, you hear me telling about it in a sermon somewhere else.

I say, "Man, you should have been there. I rose with the grace of Jordan, the explosiveness of Kobe, and I threw it down with the force of LeBron." You would call me on it. To everybody listening, you’d say, "No, he didn't. The guy tripped over the foul line and got a floor burn on his bald head. I was there."

You would not stand for the fabrication of that story because you were there and you saw it too. The eyewitnesses who wrote about Jesus were preaching to people who lived at the same time Jesus did. This is important because if the disciples were exaggerating or just making stuff up and rewriting history, their audience would have known it and called them on it.

For instance, shortly after Jesus was killed, Peter speaks to a crowd in the city of Jerusalem, the same city where the crucifixion had just taken place. Many, if not most, of those people listening had seen Jesus put to death. Peter stands up and says this: "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him, as you yourselves know."

"God raised this Jesus to life, and we are all eyewitnesses of the fact." In other words, Peter says, "Come on, everybody, you all know what Jesus did. You saw these things too for yourselves. Some of you were there when He healed blind Bartimaeus. Some of you ate lunch on a hillside one day when He fed 5,000 people with two fish and five biscuits."

"Some of you were at Lazarus' funeral, and then four days later, you saw him in the marketplace. Come on, you guys know these things too." The audience's reaction is very interesting. They don't say, "What? We don't know what in the world you're talking about," or "That's not what happened." Instead, it says they were cut to the heart, and they wanted to know how they could be saved.

On that day, over 3,000 people turned toward God, asked for forgiveness, and embraced new life in Jesus. They were baptized, and many others would follow because they knew that Peter was telling the truth. Lee Strobel, in his incredible book called *The Case for Christ*, was a former atheist who did an investigative report on whether this stuff is true or not.

He said, "I had to ask myself, would Christianity have taken root as quickly as it did if these disciples were saying things that their audience knew were exaggerated or false?" Maybe you're thinking, "But you know how legends grow. I heard that these accounts weren't written down for centuries after Jesus died. I heard that myths about Jesus had grown up between His death and the time the New Testament was actually written down—myths that distort the truth."

You know that happens after a few hundred years as different generations start to spin their stories and legends kind of grow. As you check out the facts, you will find archaeological discoveries have forced scholars to give earlier and earlier estimates about when the New Testament was written.

I'm certainly not an expert in archaeology, and I can't dunk a basketball either, but brilliant scholars place the writings of New Testament accounts of Jesus some 30 to 45 years after His death. This means that the New Testament was available in written form while plenty of eyewitnesses were still alive to say, "Yes, that's the way it happened," or "I was there, and that is not what I saw."

You say, "Okay, I hear you, but didn't it get corrupted?" Remember that old game we used to play as kids? We called it Gossip or Telephone, where you’d whisper to one kid and another kid would whisper to the next kid down the line. If there were 50 kids in a classroom, and the original statement whispered to the first kid is, "Cows are creatures that eat grass," as one kid whispers to another, it gets passed all the way through the class.

The original statement starts to giggle as it gets to the back of the room. You ask, "What did you get?" They go, "Our teacher’s got really bad gas." Although that is not an accurate picture of how the Bible got copied at all, a better one would be this: one kid whispers, "Jesus is Lord," to not one but to two.

Each of those two whispers to two more, and then those two more, and so on it goes. Now, when they all get done, you would have not just one distorted version but dozens of versions. "Jesus is bored," "Pieces of board," "Freeze us a gourd." You get the idea. But what if all the final versions are the same?

What if every kid at the end of the line ends up with "Jesus is Lord"? That's what happened. There are 24,000 New Testament manuscripts in all, and the amazing thing is they all say the same thing: Jesus is Lord. You'll find variations in spelling and such, but 99.9% match up, and there is absolutely no variance whatsoever in any major theme.

The ones copying the New Testament, unlike that kids' game where half the fun is just making mistakes on purpose, were serious about their work because they considered these documents to be sacred. If I heard that 35 out of 50 kids, after playing that game, all said, "Jesus is Lord," I'd still figure out that's what the original statement was.

But when there are 24,000 New Testament manuscripts and they all say the same thing, doesn't it make sense that they were accurate copies of the original? To me, this 24,000 number is pretty staggering. Some of you maybe, in your freshman year in college, right before the first big football game and the tailgate party you were going to go to, some professor assigned you to read the works of Plato and Aristotle over the weekend.

When you read those things, did you ever question the accuracy of those writings? Probably not. They're just accepted at face value as being accurate representations of what the authors originally wrote way back when. Nobody questions the historicity. Nobody questions the accuracy of the transmission of those documents throughout the centuries. No one questions if maybe some errors have crept in along the way.

Here's how the number of ancient manuscripts stack up. For *The Jewish War* by first-century historian Josephus, we have nine pieces of manuscript to back that up. For Plato's writing, we have 30 of those documents. For Homer's *Iliad*, which some of you read in school, we have 650 manuscripts. The New Testament: 24,000.

The evidence is pretty compelling. Is there any corroborating evidence from the outside? There is remarkable agreement between historical records and the eyewitness accounts written in the Bible. Where there have been contradictions between the Bible and historical records over the years, further archaeological discoveries only prove that the Bible is the most accurate account every single time.

For instance, there are several statements in Luke's writings in the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, which he also wrote, that on the surface seem to be inaccurate, raising doubts about the rest of what Luke wrote. One example was Luke's reference in Acts chapter 17 to a term called "politarchs" for city officials.

For a long time, some people believed that Luke was just making that up because there's no evidence of the term "politarchs" ever being found in any ancient Roman documents until archaeologists began to dig. They found a first-century arch with an inscription that begins, "In the time of the politarchs."

You can find it in the British Museum in London. Since then, archaeologists have found more than 35 different inscriptions that mention that same term that Luke used. In fact, archaeologists have carefully examined Luke's references to 32 different countries, 54 cities, nine different islands, and did not find one single mistake.

On the contrary, the more they dig, the more they find Luke, the writer of the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, to be one of the most accurate historians of all time. You take any other religious truth source and you apply the same type of test to them and see if they pass.

The evidence in and outside of itself points to the accuracy and the reliability of the Bible being God's Word. So, what's that have to do with me? Everything. I have to admit to you that I have found the Bible not just to be an accurate book about historical events about Jesus and such, but I have found this book to be painfully accurate in what it says about me.

This book nailed me. I've never read a book that cuts through the veneer of my life as quickly as the Bible does. It gets to the root issues of my character, my values, my morality, and my sin. It says this about all of us in the book of Romans: "For all have sinned and all of us fall short of God's glorious standard."

That's what the Bible says about you and me. As painful as it is for me to admit, I'd have to say that's the accurate truth. But I love what Romans goes on to say: "Yet now, God in His gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sin."

This is what the whole book’s about. God longs for relationship with people like us. People like us broke that relationship, so God moved to restore the relationship with people like us. That's it. The Word of God can change your life. It can change your life.

Aaron Brockett: How about you? Have you ever stopped to consider why the truth of God's Word should matter so much in your life? The Bible is far more than this ancient collection of writings. Through its pages, we discover who God is, what He's done for us through Jesus Christ, and how He desires us to live.

If you have doubts or questions or hesitations about the Scriptures, could I encourage you to explore them for yourself? Open God's Word, read it, study it, wrestle with it, and ask God to reveal Himself to you through it. Our thanks to Mike Breaux for that encouraging message today. And our thanks as well to Acappella Ministries for their music of worship.

If you'd like to hear this program again, just go visit our website at thechristianshour.org. There, you can download today's message for free and explore all of our past messages from this year. You can also listen on your favorite podcasting platform by searching The Christians Hour. If today's program encouraged you, we'd love to hear from you.

Send us an email and let us know at thechristianshour@gmail.com. And we kindly ask if you would consider helping share messages just like this one to people and communities around the world who've never been introduced to God's Word. To learn more or to make a gift, visit our website at thechristianshour.org.

And be sure to connect with us on social media. You can find us by searching for The Christians Hour on Facebook and Instagram. Thank you again for listening. Join us again next week as we continue our series, Some Things Never Change.