Jesus’ View of the Scriptures

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With a talkative wife and four young children, I’m used to a certain level of noise in the background. And I’ve realized I just, I need that level of noise to be able to focus. And so from the time that I got into Shreveport on Monday afternoon until the time they got into Shreveport on Thursday afternoon, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the hotel because it was just too quiet.

So when I wasn’t in classes, I actually spent most of my free time over at Chick-fil-A because at least there are children screaming in the background and it feels a little bit like home. That’s not a joke. That really happened.

So I was sitting at Chick-fil-A working during the week trying to get the message ready for this morning. And I was looking over a lot of different information because I wanted to come back and finish up sort of talking to you about some of the reasons why we know that the Bible is God’s work. And just like with any of these topics I’ve covered in this series of reasons to believe, you know, I’ve talked about arguments for the existence of God, I’ve talked about reasons why we believe Jesus is who he claimed to be.

Just like with any of these topics, there’s a multitude of reasons. But rather than drag this series out for a year, I’ve tried to go with three things on each one. And so I wanted to come back and how do I fit all this information into one message?

Because there are dozens of points that can be made, hundreds of pieces of information I could present to you. and trying to sift through all of it to say, what is the most compelling evidence I can give them this morning for why we know the Bible is God’s Word? And over the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked to you about Bible prophecy, things that are in there that only could have been known by God ahead of time.

And yet God foretold these things in the Scriptures, and they came to pass exactly as He said they would be. Looking at these things, I wanted to bring you this morning evidence for the inspiration of Scripture. I wanted to bring you evidence that the gospel writers really were eyewitnesses to the things that they recorded.

I wanted to bring you evidence that the Bible has not been changed over time. And there’s evidence for all of these things. But how to fit all of that into one 30-some-odd-minute message is a pretty tall chore.

And besides which, there are people who have done this far better than I could. With all the stats and the facts and the information out there, I didn’t want to come in and sound like an auctioneer this morning, trying to squeeze everything in. Others have done this really well, and I would refer you to The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

I would refer you to Seven Reasons Why You Can Trust the Bible by Erwin Lutzer. Two very good books that will give you plenty of information as to why we can trust the Bible. But they’re also written where real people can understand them.

On top of that, some of you have bought copies of a book that I wrote a couple of years ago called Assembling the Scripture Puzzle. If you have a copy of that, there are a few chapters in there that deal with this. How do we know the Bible hasn’t been changed over time?

Is the Bible inspired? Is the Bible reliable? I dealt with some things in there.

Of the books I’ve written, I’ve given more away than I’ve ever sold, which is kind of the plan. The ones that sell just give me more money to give more copies away. With that one, though, the printer set the price so high I couldn’t just give them away even at cost. So if you haven’t got a copy of Assembling the Scripture Puzzle, I’m not trying to sell them this morning.

If you haven’t got a copy of that but would like the information on how do I know the Bible’s inspired, how do I know the Bible’s reliable and hasn’t been changed, I can’t afford to give everybody copies, but if you’ll send me an email, I think my email address is in the bulletin. If you’ll send me an email, I will send you a PDF with the chapters that deal with that. I don’t care about selling books.

I want you to have the information. So if you’d like that information, let me know and I will send it to you. But I think Lee Strobel and Erwin Lutzer are great places to start if you want to understand how we can know that the Bible is God’s Word.

But of all the evidence I could give you, of all the things that I looked at this week, of all the evidence I could give you this morning that the Bible is the Word of God, the piece of evidence that I looked at that means the most to me out of all of it is the fact that Jesus believed the Bible is the Word of God. At no point during his ministry do we see Jesus being recorded as indicating that the Bible is anything other than the Word of God. It wasn’t a book of human opinion to Jesus.

It wasn’t a book of good ideas to Jesus. Jesus treated the Bible like it was the Word of God. Now, Jesus in his day only had the Old Testament.

But we look at the characteristics of the Old Testament that show its inspiration, that show that God inspired this, that God moved holy men to write this as the Holy Spirit inspired. We see those same fingerprints of God in the New Testament that we see in the Old. Now, how do we know?

How do we know? Because my skeptical mind, as I’m reading about this, says, how do we know that Jesus really believed this? Now, I want to make sure you know, I believe fully in the inspiration, the inerrancy, the reliability, the authority, and the sufficiency of the Bible, the 66 books of the Old and New Testament.

I need you to know that your pastor believes that. And when I raise these questions, it’s not because I doubt those things, But it’s because I have a skeptical mind that thinks, what about the person out there who isn’t operating off these assumptions? How do we convince them?

Because the skeptic is going to look at that and say, well, of course Jesus thought the Bible is the word of God. It’s recorded in the Bible that Jesus said those things. So the skeptic sort of starts to wonder if it’s circular reasoning.

But folks, even secular and skeptical scholars who themselves do not believe the Bible is the word of God believed that Jesus believed the Bible was the Word of God. Well, what about the people who say Jesus never existed? Scholars do not tell you Jesus never existed.

Those are people in the comments section on YouTube that tell you Jesus never existed. Serious historians agree, whether they believed he was the Son of God or not, serious historians agree that Jesus existed and was crucified in Jerusalem in the 30s AD. It’s almost beyond question as far as historians and scholars go.

And of those same historians and scholars, even the skeptical ones, again, who don’t believe themselves, even guys out there who don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God, they believe that Jesus believed it. So they’re saying, yeah, I think Jesus was wrong, which is pretty gutsy from my standpoint to say. They think Jesus was wrong, but they say, yeah, Jesus agreed.

A guy I’ve quoted before, Dr. Gary Habermas from Liberty University, wrote about this and talked about some, he named some of these well-known skeptical scholars by name. And he says, critical scholars like Bultman and Ehrman, you might have heard of Bart Ehrman, some of the books that he’s written questioning the authority of the Bible.

He says, critical scholars like Bultman and Ehrman frequently argue something like this. Jesus was clearly a Jew, so it is no surprise that he agreed with the common Jewish view regarding the nature and authority of the Old Testament as God’s word. That the early church continued this same view further confirms this idea.

But the strongest argument is that even though critics do not know for sure which specific gospel statements Jesus really made and which ones he did not, it is still firmly established by the presence of many such comments across multiple independent source traditions that he taught the authority of Scripture. Now what that means, Gary Habermas, this Christian scholar, is reading the works of these critics of the Bible, reading the works of these skeptics, and he says they believe that Jesus believed. And they know that Jesus believed the Bible was the word of God because Jesus was a Jew and that’s what you believed.

And the fact that the early Christian church continued to believe that the Bible is the word of God means they were taking their cues from Jesus. Now, for those who say we can’t trust the Bible, how do we know it’s not all made up? Even the critical, skeptical scholars will say, You take all these quotes, all these pieces from the Bible, all these pieces from the Gospels, where Jesus quotes from Scripture, where Jesus points to the Scripture, where Jesus says, look to the Scriptures.

And they said, we don’t know which ones are real and which ones are not. By the way, I say they’re all real. There’s plenty of evidence to say they’re all real. But the skeptics say, well, some of them are real, some of them are things Jesus really said, and some of them are not. But the fact that there are so many, and they’re recorded in so many different places, And they’re recorded by so many different people that if even half of them are fake, and we don’t know which ones, but even if half of them are real, you’ve still got all of these examples of Jesus saying, hey, this is God’s word.

Folks, that’s not something coming out of our Bible colleges. That’s not something being taught in our pulpits today. That’s something coming from even critical scholars who themselves don’t believe the Bible is the word of God.

They say we don’t believe, but we believe Jesus believed. And folks, this morning, if you believe Jesus is who he claimed to be, if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, you need to know that this book is not something he thought was just full of human opinion, not just good suggestions for your life. Jesus, the one we look to, the one we believe died and rose again for us, the one we serve as the Son of God, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, our Creator, he said this was God’s work and not man’s.

Sometimes people will get on the fence and say, well, I don’t know if I should believe it or not. Jesus believed it, and for me, that’s a pretty important point. Now, one of the places where we can see in Scripture is a story that Jesus told.

There are many, I mean, you flip through the pages of the Gospels, anywhere you see in red is Jesus speaking. And all throughout those red letters, Jesus is quoting the Old Testament, he’s affirming the Old Testament, he’s pointing people to that and saying, listen to that. One of those many places that we’re going to look at this morning, let me rephrase that, we’re going to look at one of those many places this morning, one of those many incidents in his life where he quoted the scripture in that way, and it’s a story that he tells about a beggar named Lazarus and Abraham and a wicked rich man in Luke chapter 16.

If you haven’t turned there with me already, I’d encourage you to do so this morning, Luke chapter 16. Now prior to where we start in Luke chapter 16, Jesus has been in a dispute with the Pharisees about God’s authority. And as Jesus taught about God’s kingdom, really starting in Luke 15.

3 and moving on to Luke 16. 13, they mocked him. It says in Luke 16.

14 that they mocked him for his teaching. And so Jesus responds to their mocking, because he’s teaching, here’s what God’s word says, here’s what you’re supposed to do. And they sat over there, and it says in verse 14, Now the Pharisees who were lovers of money also heard these things, and they derided him.

They mocked him, they scoffed, they made fun. And really, they weren’t just mocking him. They were mocking the basis of his authority, which was the word of God.

So Jesus responds in a number of ways. He points out a few things to them in the way he responds. He tells the Pharisees, first of all, that instead of honoring God, they were just concerned with looking good in front of people.

They didn’t give two hoots about what God said, as long as they looked good. And he tells them that in verse 15. He also points out that when the good news of God’s kingdom was proclaimed in continuation of the law and the prophets, they rejected it.

He says that in verse 16. He says that the law and the prophets were God’s word, and when the gospel came as a continuation of that, the good news of the coming of God’s kingdom, when it came and it was built on that same foundation and came as a continuation, you just rejected it. You don’t care about God’s word.

You care about what you want. and he said in verse 18 that they had even twisted, he gives an example of how they twisted God’s law to allow themselves to do the opposite of what God wanted. In this case, it was divorce.

Now, God’s law was there to teach them that marriage was supposed to be a lifelong covenant. And yet the Pharisees had twisted the rules that God had put in the law about divorce to the point where the Pharisees believed they could divorce their wives for any reason whatsoever. Now think about the logical gymnastics you have to go through to take a command from God and twist it to where it says the opposite.

God says, be faithful, stay together. And the Pharisees interpret that as, oh, if by faithful and stay together, you mean she burns dinner and I can tell her to get out, then great. We have no problem here.

That’s what they’ve done. The Pharisees believed that for just about any reason they could dissolve their marriages. And Jesus said, you’ve totally undermined the authority of God’s word here in verse 18.

And because of their doubt of God’s authority, in verse 17, he tells them it’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail. One of the smallest little marks on the page. He said, it’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one little bit of God’s will, God’s word to be erased by you.

Because they were acting as though God’s word didn’t really have authority. It was all the authority of our laws, our traditions, what we want, what we’ve added to God’s word. That’s what we’re going to go with.

And Jesus said, you know, all this other stuff is garbage. You can’t change God’s word any more than you can change the existence of the universe. It’s more likely the universe just stops existing than it is for God’s word to change.

And so to illustrate this point, he tells them a story. Jesus was great at doing this, telling stories to get people to understand deeper truths. And he wants them to understand that their rejection of him came ultimately because they rejected the word of God and the authority of God.

They weren’t content with God’s word. They were looking for signs. They were looking for confirmations.

They were looking for miracles that would satisfy their fleshly desires, that would satisfy their doubtful attitudes. They said, folks, they said they believed the scriptures. They pretended they were the people who were following the scriptures the best. They said they believed the scriptures, but they didn’t act like there was any authority in the scriptures.

I hope we can never be accused of saying we believe the scriptures, yet not acting like it. That’s what the Pharisees were doing. They were looking for something else that might convince them.

But folks, if we don’t accept the authority of God’s own word, what higher authority is there to convince us? If God said it, who else’s opinion do I need? The Bible says, let God be true and every man a liar.

If all of humanity lines up on one side and says this is true and God says the opposite is true, all the authority of all of humanity doesn’t match up to God’s authority. If we’re not going to listen to God, what higher authority is there to convince us of something? And Jesus, in contrast, stood firm on the authority of God’s word.

And so he gave them this story to help them to understand. Luke 16, starting in verse 19 and going to verse 26. He says, There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.

But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. moreover the dogs came and licked his source. So there’s this man, when it says he fared sumptuously, that means he was feasting every day.

He was pigging out. He was living high on the hog. He had a good life.

And outside the gate of his mansion, his estate, is a beggar who lays there by the gate, and he would be content even with the food that fell off the man’s table, And yet he’s never taken care of. He’s never given anything. He lays out, at least not by the rich man.

He lays out there and begs continually. Verse 22, so it was that the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.

That phrase, Abraham’s bosom, is one that there’s a lot of discussion about. We’ve had some discussions about it here recently on Wednesday nights. Some translations will say the Greek means sort of like the folds of Abraham’s skirt.

You know, how a little child will run up and tug on mommy’s skirt and hide in mommy’s skirt. But that’s sort of, you know, we’re just hiding with Abraham. And the idea here is not of heaven, but maybe of a holding place.

Not purgatory either. That’s not what the Bible teaches. but a paradise, a holding place for the dead in Christ, for the righteous dead, until we see the new heaven and new earth after the second coming.

So the idea here of Abraham’s bosom, just look at that as being a preview of heaven. It’s not purgatory. It’s not the grave.

It’s where the righteous dead went to await the day when all of Christ’s promises, All of God’s promises were fulfilled in Christ. So he’s in Abraham’s bosom, there with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. But that burial is not the end for the rich man because it goes on in verse 23 to say, And being in torments in Hades or in hell, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom.

Somehow or another, it was possible that he was able to look up and he was able to see Lazarus, this beggar being comforted in the presence of Abraham. Now the tables have turned. And by the way, the scriptures don’t indicate that we can see people in hell from heaven.

It may be possible that people in hell can see heaven, but there’s nothing that indicates it’s normal for people in heaven to be able to see hell, or for people in heaven to be able to look down on us on earth for that matter. But in this story, in this instance, sometimes God lets things happen once to make a point. In this instance, he was able to see Lazarus in the presence of Abraham, in this foretaste of paradise, being comforted.

And suddenly the man who was comforted all his life is now being tormented, and the man who lived in torment is being comforted, and the rich man thinks this is a problem and cries out. So it says in verse 24, then he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. He says that’s a pretty bleak picture that the Bible paints of eternity apart from Jesus.

He is so desperate that he would have been satisfied if Lazarus would have just come and dipped his finger in some water and dripped it on his tongue. That’s how bad it was. Even that would have provided some momentary relief.

And this man cries out to Abraham. This was a man who was Jewish, And so he was putting his faith not in what God said, but in his misinterpretation of what God had said, that I’m good with God no matter what I do, no matter how I live, because I’m descended from Abraham. He was looking to Abraham to get him to heaven instead of looking to the sacrifice that God would send in Jesus Christ. But Abraham said, Son, verse 25, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things.

But now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you, there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us. He said, now, you’re upset because things aren’t fair.

He said, but things weren’t fair before and you weren’t upset by that. You made your choices, so did Lazarus. Like I tell the kids, there’s a consequence for every choice.

Sometimes it’s a good consequence, sometimes it’s a bad consequence, sometimes it’s just a consequence, but there’s a consequence for every choice, every decision, every action. He said there’s no way, there’s a great gulf, there’s no way for us to get to you or for you to get to us. There’s no way we can do this.

By the way, folks, the only way that gulf between hell, the hell that we’re destined to, and the heaven that can be ours, the only way to span that gulf is the cross of Jesus Christ. So he says, we can’t get to you and you can’t get to us. He says in verse 27, Then he said, I beg you therefore, Father, that you would send him to my father’s house. For I have five brothers that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.

He said, it’s too late for me, but what about my brothers? Tell you what, send Lazarus back from the dead. Go save my brothers.

Send Lazarus to go tell him, to tell them about this horrible, horrible place. Have him go warn them so they don’t end up here as well. Verse 29, Abraham said to him, they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.

Now when he says Moses and the prophets, he’s talking about the scriptures. He’s talking specifically about the Old Testament. They have the word of God in the Old Testament.

Let them listen to what God said. Verse 30, and he said, no, Father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But he said to him, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.

You may say, what does this have to do with Jesus? Jesus was telling this story to illustrate the point. What Abraham said, Jesus was repeating and saying, this is the truth.

If they won’t hear Moses and the prophets, if they won’t listen to God’s word, they’re not going to be convinced no matter what miracle is sent to them. So Jesus’ point in the story is not that the man was mean because he ignored the beggar. He’s not in hell because he was mean and ignored the beggar and wasn’t generous and all those things.

This man is in hell suffering because he lived a life of indulgence, neglecting the things of God. This is a man who, by his own admission, he said, I didn’t believe and I ended up here. And we know that because he’s saying, go tell my brothers so that they will believe.

Go testify to them so they don’t end up here. This was a man who throughout his entire life had neglected the things of God. And we see from the remainder of the story, he rejected God.

He rejected word throughout his entire life. The way he lived and the way he neglected others was a symptom of that. So don’t get too hung up on, oh, he’s in hell because he didn’t take care of Lazarus.

No, his selfishness was a symptom of something else. He didn’t care about others because he didn’t care about what God said. And it was the fact that he had rejected God and rejected everything he knew about God, rejected all of God’s offers of mercy.

He had failed to repent ever in his life. Those were the reasons. His rejection of God’s mercy was the reason he was in torment.

And so he tells them, you know, send somebody to my brother’s house. Send somebody there to warn them, or to my father’s house, to warn my brothers. And they have this exchange about the law and the prophets.

Abraham says, no, no, they’ve got the scriptures. They have God’s word. If they want to know, let them read God’s word.

And he says, no, no, they’ll believe if you send somebody back from the dead. And he says, if they’re not willing to believe God, they’re not going to believe because they saw some miracle. So this man rejected God.

He acted indifferent. Maybe he didn’t believe what God said. All throughout his entire life, he rejected the things of God.

But now that he’s seen the truth firsthand, suddenly he believes what God has said. Suddenly, it’s like that old song, then I saw her face, now I’m a believer. He saw the flames, and now he’s a believer.

So he begs and pleads for Lazarus to be returned to life. He says, if he could just warn my brothers about the truth of God’s word, if Lazarus could go tell them these things are true, if only Lazarus would go tell them, then they would believe. They’d believe about what God says about sin.

They’d believe what God says about judgment. They’d believe what God says about eternity. If Lazarus would just go tell them.

And Abraham says, the rich man and his brothers, you’ve all had the law, you’ve all had the prophets, you’ve had access to God’s word, And you could have believed it at any time just like Lazarus did. No, no, if Lazarus would come back from the dead and Lazarus would go tell them, surely they would repent and they would believe. Isn’t that kind of silly?

I mean, on one hand, I kind of understand it. Just show them a miracle. We hear people say from time to time, if God will prove to me he’s real, I’ll believe.

Well, God doesn’t have to prove anything to you, but God has already provided plenty of evidence that he’s real if you’re just inclined to see it. I get that. That’s a function of our human nature to say, oh, if somebody would just come tell me, if somebody would prove it to me, then I’ll believe.

But when you think about it, when you really think about it, it’s kind of silly for him to say if Lazarus would just tell them, they’d believe. Why would they believe Lazarus when he told them they didn’t believe God when he told them? Why would they take Lazarus’ word when they rejected God’s word?

It makes no sense. What he is saying to Abraham is that God’s word is not enough. God’s word wasn’t enough to convince him, it wouldn’t be enough to convince them.

He just needed a sign. He just needed a miracle, like the Pharisees were asking for. Just need one more thing.

Just do what I want, and then I’ll believe. Just package the message in a way that it’s palatable to me, and I might go along with it. And Abraham said, if they would not believe God when he speaks, they will not believe anything.

Folks, the same is true for us today. If we’re not willing to hear God when he speaks, if we’re not willing to believe based on the authority of God, then what else is there left to convince us? Now, that doesn’t negate evidence.

I wouldn’t have started out on this whole series presenting you with evidence. God gave us minds to think with and to reason with. Whether we use them or not is sort of up to us, but he gave us those abilities.

He gave us the opportunity to reason. And I think he’s left enough evidence here for us to look at and believe if we’re willing to. But if we’re not willing to take the authority of God, if we’re not willing to take God at his word, who is Lazarus?

Who is there left that has more authority than God? Who is there left that has more credibility than God? And by the way, folks, Abraham said this in the story, but by Jesus repeating it as a lesson to the Pharisees, Jesus is saying it too.

If they’re not willing to believe God, why would they believe Abraham? How do we know the Bible is the word of God? Because Jesus said he believed it.

Jesus said, there’s no authority greater here. If you’re not willing to listen to the prophets and Moses, if you’re not willing to listen to the scriptures as God has written them down and given them to you through these men that he inspired, if you’re not willing to take God at his authority, what higher authority is there that’s going to convince you? And we see here that Jesus is affirming a few things about the scriptures.

We’re almost finished. We see that he’s affirming the inspiration of the scriptures, that they were breathed out by God, because he was telling them that the Pharisees, if they wanted to hear from God, then they needed to look at the scriptures. Stop looking for signs.

Stop looking for miracles. Stop looking for things to just fall out of heaven and land in your bank account to prove it to you. If you want to hear from God, look at the scriptures, is his message.

and that tells us that Jesus believed that the scriptures were breathed out by God. They were God’s own word. We know that Jesus affirmed the authority of scripture.

The scriptures, when the scriptures speak, it’s because God spoke. And so they bear that authority. If somebody brought you a letter, a piece of paper that said you’ve got to do such and such, we’re probably not going to listen to that.

Not a lot of people are, nobody’s going to tell me what to do. But we have, because what authority does that have? I’m puzzled, but people have done social experiments.

They will call random people on the phone and convince them that they are people of authority, and they’ll get them to do all sorts of things. I won’t go into the details, but people have come up on criminal charges over this sort of thing, because they convince people they’ve got authority because a phone call came in from somewhere. Somebody calling you on the phone, somebody sending you a piece of paper, doesn’t have authority to tell you what to do.

But you know what? There’s a process where a bill goes through Congress, and it’s engrossed, and it’s passed in both houses of Congress, and it goes to the President, and it gets signed, and once it has the approval of the House and the Senate and the President, and it’s got that seal, it’s the law. And that piece of paper suddenly no longer is just a piece of paper.

It bears the authority of the President and the Congress of the United States. The Bible is like that, only more so it’s God’s Word. It’s not just some things that people wrote down.

It bears God’s stamp of authority, and when it speaks, it bears the authority of the God of creation who told us how to live and what to do. And Jesus told them, told the Pharisees, that the scriptures have more authority than any miracle ever could. Why would I send a miracle when you’ve already got the scriptures?

And third of all, Jesus affirmed the sufficiency of scripture. He affirmed the sufficiency of scripture. That means scripture’s enoug