Can You Actually Trust the Bible? | Phil Kniesel

A lot of people respect the Bible, but don’t really trust it. Others have questions but don’t feel like they can ask them out loud. In this message, Pastor Phil walks through some of the biggest doubts people have about the Bible and looks at whether it actually holds up.

This isn’t just about information. It’s about whether you can build your life on it. Because if the Bible is trustworthy, it doesn’t just sit on a shelf. It speaks into how you live.

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Transcript

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- Hey, this is Phil Kal, lead pastor at Hope City Church. Thanks for tuning into our podcast. My prayer is that this helps and encourages you, gives you some practical ways to live out your faith and ultimately fills you with hope. Enjoy the message.- Non-negotiables are powerful because they quietly shape your life. They're the things you've already decided before the pressure hits. So when the moment comes, you don't just have to debate, you act and we all have them. But for some of us, they show up in funny ways. Maybe you, maybe you never share your fries. I get it. They ordered a salad. You've got your fries and everyone needs to live with their decisions. , what about this one? My side of the bed is my side of the bed. Anyone else with me on that one? , we got someone clapping. Yeah, . There are those of you who are the thermostat gatekeepers. There's only one correct temperature and it's yours. And some you just park far away, even if it takes 10 minutes longer to get inside because it just makes sense non-negotiables. But it's not just on trivial things. When it comes to our faith in our character, we have non-negotiables. We choose integrity over advantage. We walk in faith over feelings. We guard personal purity, we choose family over our careers. Those things shape who we become. I'm starting a series entitled The Non-Negotiables, where we're looking at the things that are the guiding principles, the core convictions and the foundational beliefs of Christianity, the things that shape who we are as Christians. And these are the things that our church and in fact the Capital C Church across the world would hold as core elements of belief. They are non-negotiable. And in this series we're gonna look at the Bible, the Trinity, salvation through Christ, the Church, and the final judgment, all pillars and foundational and core Christian belief. And I'm gonna begin by talking about the Bible. And right from the outset, I wanna let you know that today I'm gonna give you a lot of information. But this is not just about filling your mind with information. This is about helping you decide whether you can actually build your life on this book. According to a 2021 Barna research report, 11% of North Americans read their Bible every day. 14% read several times a week. 9% are once a week, 8% are once a month. 16% are a few times a year, 13% less than once a year, and 29% never. Most Christians, I believe would say the Bible is important and needs to be read. Most would say it contains the words of God, but many don't read it as much as they should. And then there are those people who think they know what it says when it actually doesn't, and some who change the meaning of things to suit their own preferences or cultural context. What I've also noticed is that some Christians have real questions about the Bible, but at times are too afraid to say them out loud Questions like if it's been translated so many times, how can I know if it is still legitimate? If it was written by men, how can it really be from God? And doesn't the Bible contain contradiction? So what do we do with that? Good questions. You know, I think people don't reject the Bible because they've studied it deeply. I believe they reject it because they've heard things about it and maybe what they heard isn't true. Maybe you grew up hearing about the Bible. Maybe it was misused in your context, maybe you walked away from it. Maybe you have some respect for it, but little trust, maybe you believe it, but you got some questions and sometimes you just feel it's wrong to ask them out Loud. Author William mounts in his book, why Should I Trust The Bible says this, we can no longer assume that people trust their Bible and believe what it says about itself. Western culture has shifted away from its Judeo-Christian heritage. And the popular media has launched such an attack on the believability of scripture that many churchgoers have serious questions about the Bible. That's exactly where people are today. And you just have to Google Bart Airman or Bill Mayer's movie ridiculous to see how cultural hostility and bent toward discrediting the Bible exists. So today is information, yes, but it's not just about information. It's about recognizing can you really build your life around this book? Because if it isn't trustworthy, then everything we do here just kind of falls in on itself. At Hope City, we go to the Bible every week because we believe it's the living and act of Word of God. Today I'm gonna show you why. Why the Bible matters, why it's the most popular book in history, why it's also the most quoted and debated book, why it's stands up and why this is a non-negotiable in Christian faith. One of the most popular websites for skeptics on the Bible is Reddit. And what's crazy, and this actually makes me laugh a little bit, it it shows that anyone sitting in sweatpants in their parents' basement can post an alleged contradiction. And so what I wanna do is address some of the key objectives and problems people have with the Bible. And the first objection I want to address is that it's been said that the Bible is just a book. The Bible isn't just a book, nor did it drop out of the sky. It's a unified story. A collection made up of 66 books written by over 40 authors across a span of 1500 years within different cultures, different languages and different contexts. And yet somehow with all that diversity, it tells one unified story. God creates humanity, falls, God rescues, Jesus redeems and restoration is coming. That kind of unity is not normal or even humanly possible. When you think about what it took to write it, like if I were to ask 40 people in this room to write about God, what we would get is 40 different slants. We would not get unity. But the Bible, it has different voices and yet the same message it holds together and not just loosely, it has this consistency that ultimately points to Jesus. Historians tell us that the Bible is one of the most, if not the most reliable and credible documents from antiquity. And one of the ways people have visualized this, this unity, this credibility, is through a chart of the Bible's cross references throughout scripture. There are 63,779 cross references. So thousands of thousands of places where one passage connects to another. I wanna show you a picture of this. Here's a graph that illustrates just that each curved line is saying, Hey, this is one moment where scripture connects indirectly or directly to another part of the Bible. There's over 63 thousands of these, by the way, the bottom line there, those are the books of the Bible and the chapters of the Bible. And the darker that the line is, the more it is emphasized throughout scripture. Look at all those inner connections. If we're honest, if one person wrote a book that did all that, everyone in the world would say, that's unbelievable. That's incredible. Let me just remind you once again. The Bible has over 40 authors written over 1500 years across three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, in three languages, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. This alone reveals continuity. It reveals coherence. It reveals this one unfolding story. And listen, it's not by accident. This isn't random, it wasn't by chance. It points to a divine mind behind it all. And the whole narrative and the books, what they do is they always point to Jesus. He himself reiterated this after his resurrection. Luke writes about this. It says, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he being Jesus explained to them the disciples, what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. The Bible is not random human opinion. It contains a coherent divine narrative that in and of itself is a miracle. Another key objection raised by many is that the Bible has been changed over time. It's been copied and translated so many times that what we have today must be completely different from what was originally written. And it sounds like this would make sense, but when you actually look at the evidence, it tells a very different story. We don't just have one or two ancient copies of the Bible. We have thousands of manuscripts. Now, in order for an ancient document to be trusted, scholars consider a slew of factors. And one of those is the number of manuscripts available because the more you have, the more you can contrast and compare for possible contradictions, mistakes, even inconsistencies. So more is better. And scholars would agree that if we compare the number of New Testament manuscripts with other writings in history that are accepted as accurate, we find that the Bible is the most trustworthy set of documents from the entire ancient world. And I wanna show you some comparatives to give you an example of this. So there's this guy called Thsa dies. He lived from four 60 to 365 BC and he wrote extensively about Greco-Roman culture. Scholars trust his writings as historically accurate and there are eight copies in existence. The earliest were transcribed 1300 years after the events of which he spoke. There are five copies of Aristotle's Poetics dated 1400 years after the originals. Caesar's Gaelic Wars described events that occurred in 58 BC and we have a few manuscripts that are from a thousand years after his death. And there are also two ancient biographies of Alexander the Great that are seen as fully accurate and authoritative. The earliest was written 400 years after he died. And so historians tell us that all these are true and can be trusted. Now compare that to the New Testament. There are over 25,000 copies of the New Testament documents in existence. It's the greatest number of manuscripts of any writing of its kind from the ancient world. And parts of the New Testament were written as early as 20 to 30 years after the life of Jesus. That would be Paul's letters. And most scholars agree that the gospels were written between 30 to 50 years after the life of Jesus. We don't have another case in history where the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest manuscripts are as short as this. And so that means we can trust them because think about it. If someone's gonna make up stories about miracles and events they claim really happened, they would wait until all the eyewitnesses were dead and gone made up. Stories get exposed when the people are still alive to refute them. Rumors they never make it far when they run up against facts. It's why when the Apostle Paul argues for the historical basis for Jesus's resurrection from the dead, it's why he says this, he being Jesus appear to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living. He's saying, do you have any doubts? Go ask these people. They're still around the gospel. Writers also include people's names in their accounts. Again, just stating, if you doubt some of this, go ask these people yourself. So yes, we have thousands of manuscripts over time, many that are incredibly close to the originals and when compared, we find remarkable consistency. Differences do exist, but they're minor. They would be things like spelling variations, word order and the things that wouldn't change the overall meaning of the text that makes the Bible not less reliable because it's been copied so many times. Rather more reliable because there's so many copies to compare. Alright, pastor Phil, what about the contradictions? Doesn't the Bible contradict itself in different passages? This one tends to shake people a bit.'cause even in the gospels we have one writer that says one thing about an event and it seems that another writer says another thing about the same event. So if there's contradictions, how can they be trusted? I wanna show you as an illustration, one such apparent contradiction. Let's take the resurrection of Jesus account, the gospel writer Matthew says, the angel said to the woman, do not be afraid, woman being Mary. Then the gospel writer John says, Mary saw two angels in white seated where Jesus's body had been one at the head and the other at the foot. So which one is it? Basic math comes in handy here where there are two, there is always one. There's no contradiction. Matthew just says, one angel spoke. John tells us how many there were. Matthew didn't say that there was only one angel, rather that just one of them spoke. What is often labeled as contradiction is actually something more ordinary. It's different perspectives on the same event. And this is seen over and over in the gospels, meaning Matthew, mark, Luke, and John. Four different writers telling about the events of Jesus' life. And so what you get are four different angles, different details emphasize for what each writer thought mattered most. And instead of weakening the credibility, this actually strengthens it because that's exactly how eyewitness accounts work. If four people witnessed the same event and gave you word for word identical accounts, you would think something's off here. Did they meet before and decide what to say? Real true testimony allows for variation in perspective, but consistency in truth and friends. That's what we see all throughout Scripture. Another objection is that the Bible was written by men. And because of that, how can it be trusted as God's word? Yeah, humans wrote the Bible, but the claim has never been, humans weren't involved. The claim is God worked through human authors. The Bible says all scripture, all scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting and training and righteousness. The Bible didn't bypass human personalities, but God spoke through them, which is why we get different writing styles, different tones, different emphasis. I mean, David writes poetry. Paul writes theology. Solomon writes about sex and Luke writes historical accounts, but it's the same God behind it all communicating one message. Think of it like music, different instruments, same composer. Okay, but what about those passages that gr against us? Like we read stuff in the Old Testament where God judges a people group and we think, what do we do with that? Or we read about polygamy in the Old Testament. Think who does that? Timothy Keller says When reading passages like that, we need to consider that. That the Bible might not always be teaching what we think it's teaching. In other words, be slow to judge something from another time and culture until you understand what it is saying in context. The books of Exodus and Leviticus can be a stumbling block for some. But I want you to notice that there is a difference between the Bible explaining something that is happening and God affirming and encouraging what is happening. So for example, old Testament scholars, I alluded to this already, say that polygamy was universal in the ancient near East. They also point out that the Bible is quite subversive about it. So socially, culturally and spiritually, the lives of these people are a mess. The children born of Abraham's relationships with his wives hate each other. To this day, Isaac's children fight, lie and turn on one another, Jacob deceives and on and on it goes. It's complete family dysfunction. And so you don't have to read long to figure out polygamy doesn't work out so well and so far from endorsing it, the Bible exposes the misery and brokenness that comes from it. The same is true and I've heard people say, well, doesn't the Bible support slavery? Because Paul writes, slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear. When we hear the word slavery, we think of the brutal Atlantic slave trade where humans were abused and treated as property. History tells us that first century Roman slavery wasn't like that. It functioned more like bonded labor or employment structures that had social mobility. It had legal distinctions that went with it. It was really different from what we think of in modern history. And so Paul is not endorsing the owning of another human being as some ideal. He is speaking into an existing social structure and telling believers how to live faithfully within it. Context matters. So don't reject the Bible because of a shallow reading of it. Understand what the narrative itself is working to accomplish because as I said earlier, the ultimate story of the Bible, it points to Jesus. Everything really comes to head when you consider Jesus. Because at the end of the day, you don't just have to decide what do I believe about the Bible? You have to decide what do I believe about Jesus? I heard it said Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is given to us. Jesus is the true and better Abraham answering the call of God to go out into the void to create a new people of God. And Jesus is a true and better David, whose victory becomes his people's victory even though they didn't lift a stone to accomplish it. Everything in scripture points to a unified story. God's plan to rescue humanity through Jesus, which led to a sacrifice on the cross and the whole provided through the resurrection. It's what we celebrated last weekend at Easter. That's the good news of Jesus. And here's the thing, if you were to look at the life of Jesus, he didn't treat scripture casually. He quoted it often. He treated it as authority. He built his life and teachings on it. He spoke about it as something that would endure forever. This is what he said in Matthew chapter five. For truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter nor the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law or the scriptures until everything is accomplished. No one can say I believe in Jesus, but I'm not sure about the Bible.'cause what they're actually doing is disagreeing with Jesus about the Bible and that creates a tension that really won't hold up. Simply said, your view of scripture is directly tied to your view of Christ. And so friends, I hope that what I've shared brings some legitimacy to you for the Bible. And in fact it also equips you.'cause what we can't do and what we must not do is continue to hold on to ideas about the Bible simply because our culture told us or our university told us, or the media told us it has to be this way. Friends challenge what you hear, realize evidence is out there because it's highly possible that our culture stories, our symbols, our accepted behaviors, those are the things that are misguided and flat out wrong. Not the Bible. Elon Musk has an AI engine called Grok and it was asked to analyze the Bible from a group of people who were antibi to find some contradictions. But instead of debunking it, it found deep patterns of coherence. It revealed internal consistencies, repeated themes and a kind of architectural or structure beneath the surface. The video compared these patterns to DNA coding or mathematical symmetry. It ultimately said the Bible is not random or chaotic, it's highly ordered. It's that this level of complexity points to something beyond human origin. Yes, because the Bible friends is God's word. And what this comes down to then is an issue of authority. It's not is the Bible trustworthy? It's will I accept it as true? Because if it's true, then it doesn't just inform your life, it speaks into it. It challenges you. It confront things in you. It calls you to change, to surrender, to trust God in areas you would rather control. Hebrews says, for the word of God is active and alive, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart. The Bible isn't just historical, historically reliable and theologically accurate. It's personally transformational. It's something to experience because when you read it, you're not just taking in information, you are encountering God. And that's why people across generations, across cultures have found direction in it. When they were lost, they have found peace in it. When they were anxious, they found clarity in it when everything else felt uncertain and they found hope in it. When all was hopeless, the Bible, it's not just a book you admire, it's a voice you follow without it. Christianity becomes whatever you feel in the moment. Truth becomes whatever culture decides it is. And God becomes whatever version of him you're most comfortable with. But with it you have something, solid friends, something steady, something that can guide you, something that can direct you. When life gets confusing and something to hold onto, when life gets difficult, it becomes a non-negotiable. John tells us last book of the Bible, revelation, almost the last words of the Bible. This is what he says. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll. If anyone adds to them, God will add to that person. The plagues described in the scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this scroll. That's sobering. If we believe the Bible, we can't change what it says, add to what it says or take away from what it says. We just live by what it says. This is non-negotiable hope city. Will you build your life around this book? Lots of people respect the Bible, but don't read it. Lots of people believe parts of the Bible, but don't follow it. Lots of people own a copy but aren't shaped by it. Let's not be lots of people. Jesus himself said this, and I wanna, I wanna read you this in closing. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built this house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house. Yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. The wise person builds his life on the rock, on God's word, on God's principles. Hope city, may you be wise. Opinions won't hold you, culture won't hold you, feelings won't hold you. God's word will. I'm gonna ask you to stand if you are able to. I'm gonna close in prayer with you today. Let's pray. God, I thank you. I thank you that your word is not just a book, a fiction or something that we have to decide whether it's true or not. But I thank you that your word is alive, active, and powerful. I thank you for the truth that we can declare and depend upon inside of it. I thank you, God, that you have given this to us, humanity for us to know you better, to understand you, to be formed and shaped by it. And so God, I pray for my friends today that your word continues to become active and alive in their lives. I pray that when they open your word, they have an encounter with you, God, because it is living. Lord, I ask that you shape our minds, our hearts, our actions to be what you desire to be. I pray that you help us to form our lives as you have described. Help us not to be shaped by culture. Help us not to be shaped by the things around us, but only by you and your word. And so I pray for strength over this church. God, I pray for every man and woman that they may walk in the fullness, in the confidence, in the assurance, and in the power of your spirit, knowing that they can put your words into practice, knowing that your words bring life and life to the full. May they trust that may they depend upon that, may they stand upon that. And so God give them the courage and the strength to do so. And if there's someone here who is doubting your word, I pray today, they understand there is so much living proof to make your word what it is, foundational forever and from you. And so God may that truth and that reality just, just really penetrate their heart and mind for your glory. If you're joining us today and you've never made the decision to follow Jesus friend, I alluded to it that Jesus went to the cross to die for your sins, but he hadn't stayed, that he rose to offer you life both now and forever. And if you wanna make the best decision of your life, which is to follow Jesus, you might be in the house online at another campus. I wanna pray with you and just allow you the opportunity to put into words the beginning of this journey. And if the Holy Spirit is just drawing your heart, man, just make that decision. You're never gonna regret it. Let's pray. Jesus, today I see my need for you. I thank you for going to the cross, for dying, for my sins, for rising and offering me life and hope both now and forever. And so today I put my faith in you. I put my trust in you. I declare with my mouth that you are Lord. And I believe in my heart that God raised you from the dead. And so I thank you that as your word says, I can be saved. So help me to understand that. Help me to live in that. Help me to follow that. Help me to make you Lord and leader of my life. And God I pray over every individual, every family, and every couple. I ask as they go into this week. Lord, I pray that there is a sense of just your continued nearness, your guidance, and your presence. I pray that they rely upon you in and through every circumstance, in and through every way. And Holy Spirit, I pray that you just be their peace, their comforter, their guidance, their source of strength. But I also pray, Lord, that they get into your word. And as they do, may it, may it just become alive to them. May it empower them, and may they just to have an encounter with the living God through your living word. And I pray this over and for these incredible people of Hope City in the powerful and wonderful name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. If you prayed that prayer of surrendering your life to Jesus, I wanna say friend, way to go. I'm gonna ask you to tap the disc on the seat back in front of you. We'd love to get a digital booklet in your hand that talks a little bit more about knowing and following Jesus. And we'd love to get to know you in a big church. If you want prayer over anything, we're gonna have a prayer team available down at the front, left after the service. They would love to pray over and for you. A couple things before you leave. If you don't have a Bible, we want to get you one. We have some bibles at the info desk. You can just go ask for one after the service. Also, if you don't get our daily devotionals, sign up for them. It's an easy way to get the Bible into your head Monday through Friday. We send them out super early in the morning. All you have to do is go to hope city.ca/weekly and sign up for that. So Hope City, you want to hear God speak to you this week. Read his word. Thanks for being here. God bless you guys. There's connecting point in the lobby. Have an incredible Sunday.